Keats, Narrative and Audience
The Posthumous Life of Writing

Clear but sophisticated readings of Keats's major poems, informed by contemporary literary theory.

Andrew Bennett (Author)

9780521445658, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 March 1994

268 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2 cm, 0.519 kg

"When he turns his attention to the poems, Bennett proves himself to be an excellent close reader....this is a very smart book, and my brief summary of it does not do justice to the subtlety of argument and fine critical intelligence evident on every page. It provides a more highly theorized and closely reasoned account of Keats's ambivalent attitudes toward his audience than any previous study. Bennett himself is a challenging and rewarding critic to read, and with this book he has made an important contribution to Keats studies." Leon Waldoff, Studies in Romanticism

Andrew Bennett's original study of Keats focuses on questions of narrative and audience as a means to offer new readings of the major poems. It discusses ways in which reading is 'figured' in Keats's poetry, and suggests that such 'figures of reading' have themselves determined certain modes of response to Keats's texts. Together with important new readings of Keats's poetry, the study presents a significant rethinking of the relationship between Romantic poetry and its audience. Developing recent discussions in literary theory concerning narrative, readers and reading, the nature of the audience for poetry, and the Romantic 'invention' of posterity, Bennett elaborates a sophisticated and historically specific reconceptualization of Romantic writing.

Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction: figures of reading
1. Narrative and audience in Romantic poetics
2. Keats's letters
3. The early verse and Endymion
4. 'Isabella'
5. 'The Eve of St Agnes'
6. 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'
7. The spring odes
8. The 'Hyperion' poems
9. 'To Autumn'
Epilogue: allegories of Reading ('Lamia')
Notes
Bibliography, Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC]