Publisher's Synopsis
This study seeks elements of self-definition in Keats's work, the quest for the poetical character. From both his poems and letters, an aesthetic emerges which locates the poetical character in terms of a responsible role in a creative process: a transcendent imagination infuses beauty into the material world; these particulars become a source of inspiration for the artist, the foundation of "the simple imaginative mind." The readings of Keats's poems depend on these stages, on the two kinds of imagination and the mediation between them. This study is the one of the first to yield this particular synthesis, and the importance of historicism to Keats's aesthetic has before not always been weighted.
