| John Keats is a leading figure in the Romantic Movement and a great poet of the English language. His genius was viciously denied by some of his contemporary critics and poets. After 1850s, Keats's poetry and letters have drawn more and more serious critical attention for his marvelous achievement in the field of the English poetry.In the history of western literature there are as many critics who take Keats's poetry as an escape from the harsh and unforgiving reality as men of letters who read Keats's poetry as a deep political or historical engagement in the Romantic Movement. The two voices have combated each other and forged the basic divisions in the criticism of Keats's poetry. However, it is improper to read Keats's poetry merely as a pure aesthetic experience or as certain political text.The paradox in the relationship between Keats's longing for shaping existence into the permanence of beauty and his anxiety in the transience individuality, which is often presented in his early poems with the ironical tone, demonstrates not only the tension between the spirit and the matter, between the vision and the existence, but also his deep concern about the human predicament and the crisis of the modern world.Certainly, there are various critical methods available in analyzing Keats's poetry, including the historical criticism, structuralism, feminism, reader's response criticism, and so forth. At any rate, to seek the relation between Keats's poetry and his contemporaries, its influence upon female readers, and the relation between history and literature, will do less good to reveal the truth and beauty in Keats's poetry. However, the New Criticism offers a different yet fruitful reading method of poetry. Therefore, my critical approach adopts the New Criticism advocated by Cleanth Brooks.All in all, this thesis proves that Keats's poetry is a reaction, hidden in the form of paradox, against the harsh and unforgiving world brought by the rapid industrialization.
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