Additional information
by Robert White (Author)
A detailed study of John Keats's classic volume of poetry published in 1820 considered in the light of the history of melancholy
- First, book-length critical study of John Keats's collection of poems, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, And Other Poems (1820)
- Considers the anthology as a poetically and thematically unified collection, instead of the more usual method of analyzing the poems in chronological order of writing
- Proposes that the main theme running through the volume is melancholy, a very capacious medical category extending back to ancient Greco-Roman writers, through the Renaissance, and the subject of literary cults in the Romantic age
- The first detailed study of Keats's markings and annotations on his copy of Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) which was his favourite book during 1819 when he was writing the poems
This book examines John Keats's immensely important collection of poems, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, And Other Poems (1820), and is published in the volume's bicentenary. It analyses the collection as an authorially organised and multi-dimensionally unified volume rather than as a collection of occasional poems. R. S. White argues that a guiding theme behind the 1820 volume is the persistent emphasis on different types of melancholy, an ancient, all-consuming medical condition and literary preoccupation in Renaissance and Romantic poetry. Melancholy was a lifelong interest of Keats's, touching on his medical training, his temperament and his delighted reading in 1819 of Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy.
Back Jacket
'White's groundbreaking book combines two exceptional dimensions of Keats's career into one compelling argument: the genius of the 1820 collection and the significance of Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy for Keats's poetry. White goes where no-one has gone before: he unravels and decodes the marvelous pyrotechnics of Burton's proto-psychological medical text into a deepened, enhanced understanding of Keats's final collection.' Heidi Thomson, Victoria University of Wellington John Keats's classic volume of poetry, considered in the light of the history of melancholy This book examines John Keats's immensely important collection of poems, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, And Other Poems (1820), and is published in the volume's bicentenary. It analyses the collection as an authorially organised and multi-dimensionally unified volume rather than as a collection of occasional poems. R. S. White argues that a guiding theme behind the 1820 volume is the persistent emphasis on different types of melancholy, an ancient, all-consuming medical condition and literary preoccupation in Renaissance and Romantic poetry. Melancholy was a lifelong interest of Keats's, touching on his medical training, his temperament and his delighted reading in 1819 of Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. R. S. White is Emeritus Winthrop Professor of English at The University of Western Australia. Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1907 (oil on canvas), Waterhouse, John William (1849-1917) / Private Collection / Photo (c) Christie's Images / Bridgeman Images 978-1-4744-8045-1
Author Biography
Robert White is Emeritus Winthrop Professor of English at The University of Western Australia. He was Senior Lecturer at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (1974-89), and since then has been Winthrop Professor of English at the University of Western Australia, and a Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in the History of Emotions. He has held an Australian Research Council Professorial Fellowship, and most recently Visiting Senior Research Fellowship, Magdalen College, Oxford. Publications are mainly on Shakespeare, Keats, the history of emotions, and pacifism in literature. Books include John Keats: A Literary Life, Pacifism in English Literature: Minstrels of Peace, Avant-Garde Hamlet and Shakespeare's Cinema of Love. He co-edited Shakespeare and Emotions, The New Fortune Theatre: That Vast Open Stage, and Hamlet and Emotions. He is also the author of Keats's Anatomy of Melancholy Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes and Other Poems (1820) (EUP 2020).
