{"title":"Keats’s 1817 Occasions","authors":"Jonathan Mulrooney","doi":"10.1353/sel.2019.0033","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article argues that John Keats’s 1817 first volume Poems evinces a commitment to occasionalism that suffuses, and indeed defines, Keats’s work. Rather than simply viewing poems as responses to particular happenings, Keats deploys a mode of figuration in 1817 that, by privileging the notion of instance, displays the limits of poetry’s historically mediating operations. With a consideration of the volume’s arrangement, and close readings of how individual poems bring into relation the occasion of poetic composition and the occasion of the reading act, I argue that 1817 reenvisions poetry’s capacity to teach its readers how to make sense of events, and consequently asks us to rethink still-presiding notions of Keats’s poetic development.","PeriodicalId":45835,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1500-1900","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2019-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1500-1900","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sel.2019.0033","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Arts and Humanities","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Abstract:This article argues that John Keats’s 1817 first volume Poems evinces a commitment to occasionalism that suffuses, and indeed defines, Keats’s work. Rather than simply viewing poems as responses to particular happenings, Keats deploys a mode of figuration in 1817 that, by privileging the notion of instance, displays the limits of poetry’s historically mediating operations. With a consideration of the volume’s arrangement, and close readings of how individual poems bring into relation the occasion of poetic composition and the occasion of the reading act, I argue that 1817 reenvisions poetry’s capacity to teach its readers how to make sense of events, and consequently asks us to rethink still-presiding notions of Keats’s poetic development.
期刊介绍:
SEL focuses on four fields of British literature in rotating, quarterly issues: English Renaissance, Tudor and Stuart Drama, Restoration and Eighteenth Century, and Nineteenth Century. The editors select learned, readable papers that contribute significantly to the understanding of British literature from 1500 to 1900. SEL is well known for thecommissioned omnibus review of recent studies in the field that is included in each issue. In a single volume, readers might find an argument for attributing a previously unknown work to Shakespeare or de-attributing a famous work from Milton, a study ofthe connections between class and genre in the Restoration Theater.