Manifestations of Keats’s Literary Elements in His Earliest Volume of Poems

This article examines how John Keats’s first publication of poetry anthology, Poems, exemplifies the author’s literary elements which are associated with his diverse literary devices and thematic preoccupations. Despite his Romantic affinities with individual experiences and imagination, Keats’s concurrent awareness of the enduring vogue of classical tradition in composing poetry vigorously motivates him to incorporate established literary strategies of classical and neoclassical periods, such as Spenserian elements, heroic couplets, and Petrarchan sonnets, as most of the works included in his earliest collection clearly demonstrate. Keats’s recurrent motif of ambivalent nature in humanity and the world links with these versifications, which his predecessors utilize to enact their underlying ideas. Keats’s strong connection between poetic form and sense serves to effectuate the embodiment of his prominent ideas and emotional dispositions at the burgeoning stages of his literary career. Keats’s earliest volume demonstrates his passionate literary pursuit of the incorporation of traditional literary principles and creative Romantic poesy. The paper elucidates how the literary elements underlying Poems plays a significant part in establishing Keats’s concepts of the role of the poet and poetry, whereby he awakens his frustrated contemporaries to an ideal realm of human nature and the social world.