A Freudian Psychoanalytical Reading of John Keats's Selected Works

• Main Authors: Chia Yu Chen, 陳佳愉
• Other Authors: Yih Fan Chang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/46322123153076860494

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 英語學系 === 101 === Abstract This thesis adopts the Freudian approach to analyze Keats’s poetic idealization of the female, the arts and the reality. I argue that Keats’s poetic creation is a journey to his ideal. From his fantasy of women to the imagination of arts, there is a cycle of idealization and disillusion. Keats’s anxiety of death in 1819 furthers his attention to demise and beauty. Only the beautiful things can solace the poet’s weary soul. To quest for beauty becomes Keats’s lifelong pursuit. In Keats’s poetic world the poet does not allow the idealization autocratically to dominate him and therefore become an escapist. Instead, through the reconciliation offered from poetry, Keats gradually accepts death as a cycle of life. This disillusionment might have troubled Keats’s idealization, yet paradoxically the sense of beauty stands out. This thesis uses Freud’s concepts to examine Keats’s life and his writing. Due to traumatic memories and experiences, Keats repeatedly reveals his disillusionment with reality. I argue that the idealization and the disillusion are the duality of beauty for Keats. Moreover, Keats’s ambivalence toward females, arts and his poetic world can be effectively explicated with Freud’s psychoanalytical insight. Key Words: Keats, idealization, imagination, misogyny, Oedipus complex, fetishism, power of death, Beyond the Pleasure Principle