John Keats: Places, patterns, and poetical purposes

Keats Memorial Lecture by Professor Nicholas Roe.

Keats’s first published poem, his sonnet ‘To Solitude’, announced a creative conjunction of places and verbal patterns that would reappear in nearly everything he wrote.
Each of the four books of Endymion was written at a different place - at Carisbrooke, Margate, Hampstead, Oxford, Burford Bridge and Box Hill – and those places shaped the verbal landscapes in his poem - the opening lines, for instance, are set on the Isle of Wight near Carisbrooke Castle. 'I stood tiptoe' describes scenes and sights on Hampstead Heath; ‘Sleep and Poetry’ surveys Leigh Hunt’s study at the Vale of Health; Isabella turns Teignmouth into Tuscany; and Lamia, set inclassical Corinth, draws some scenic props from the ancient cathedral city, Winchester. Even the cider press in 'To Autumn' had a local habitation, in the precincts of St Cross Hospital.
In this illustrated talk I want to salute an energetic, physically active Keats for whom ‘footing slow’ through the mountains of Scotland stirred his imagination and the iambic pulse of his poetry.

This event was presented by the Centre for Humanities and Health: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/ahri/c...