Is Keats ‘un-woke’? Why scholars are tying themselves up in knots – Telegraph.co.uk

Situated for two centuries in the icy silence of his tomb, in the Cimitero Acattolico, Rome, John Keats at least hasnt had to confront the Keatsians the scholars, academics and other buffoons, who have published books and papers about Keats Post-Newtonian Poetics, The Etymology of Porphyros Name, The Dying Keats: A Case for Euthanasia? and, not forgetting, Keats, Modesty and Masturbation.

Now comes Lucasta Millers Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph (Jonathan Cape, 17.99), which is one big farrago of clich, jargon, mixed metaphor and general sloppiness. Page upon page is filled with phrases like under the skin, scruff of its neck, strapped for cash, cocked a snook, one fell swoop, punches far above the weight. Ad infinitum, via, raison dtre, status quo, inter alia and social kudos pepper the paragraphs, along with opined,emotional fallout, hands-on mentor, helicopter parenting, suburban new-build, dysfunctional childhood, downside and a bonding eight-week hiking holiday.

Miller talks about wanting to foreground those aspects of this, that and the other thing; shell excavate their backstories. Keats, a lower-class literary wannabe, stuck to his individual take, regardless of the mainstream which is another way of saying the poet refused to bow to conventionalities in his lifetime, though its hard to see how he could do anything much bow, scrape, dance a jig after his lifetime.

If the contemporary critics generally mocked Keatss work, this is because periodical culture was a seething piranha pool in which poetry and politics were joined at the hip. His Romantic imagination, we are vouchsafed, was elastic, winged and capacious, which conjures in my mind a picture of Ena Sharpless knickers.

Miller imposes on Keats her righteous and reproving woke sensibility. She is unhappy about exploitative political power in any guise, and in Regency England, most Britons would have found it hard to make sure their investments were ethically pure.

Continue reading here:

Is Keats 'un-woke'? Why scholars are tying themselves up in knots - Telegraph.co.uk