“Endymion” is the trait d'union between Keats's juvenilia and his better known, and conventionally more mature, works. By its nature, it is a transitional work, and thus gives the scholar special insight into the development of Keats's poetics and idiom. Moreover, “Endymion” is the Keatsian work which most rattled and provoked critics of its time.This book reconstructs the linguistic context of the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries in order to explain the reviewers' unease with regard to “Endymion”. It shows that eighteenth-century prescriptivism arose from a deep-seated anxiety of language, Lockean in origin, and that the ensuing desire to stabilize and therefore control language informed Romantic criticism in general, and the criticism of Keats's work in particular, more fundamentally than politics could or did. The imaginative and linguistic markers of Endymion are mapped and analysed in order to prove that Keats produced a "poetics of uncontrollability", a series of textual and stylistic strategies, which violated linguistic and narrative standards, and which were, therefore, perceived as unsettling.

The Poetics of Uncontrollability in Keats's “Endymion”: Language Theory and Romantic Periodicals

Anna Anselmo
2017

Abstract

“Endymion” is the trait d'union between Keats's juvenilia and his better known, and conventionally more mature, works. By its nature, it is a transitional work, and thus gives the scholar special insight into the development of Keats's poetics and idiom. Moreover, “Endymion” is the Keatsian work which most rattled and provoked critics of its time.This book reconstructs the linguistic context of the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries in order to explain the reviewers' unease with regard to “Endymion”. It shows that eighteenth-century prescriptivism arose from a deep-seated anxiety of language, Lockean in origin, and that the ensuing desire to stabilize and therefore control language informed Romantic criticism in general, and the criticism of Keats's work in particular, more fundamentally than politics could or did. The imaginative and linguistic markers of Endymion are mapped and analysed in order to prove that Keats produced a "poetics of uncontrollability", a series of textual and stylistic strategies, which violated linguistic and narrative standards, and which were, therefore, perceived as unsettling.
2017
Endymion
Keats
Eighteenth-century Prescriptivism
John Locke
Romantic Periodicals
Romantic Criticism
Morphological Analysis
Neologism
Compounding
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11392/2495294
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