An Ecofeminist Study Of John Keats’s Poetry

John Keats is a poet of superb talent in the English literary world, an important writer serving as a link between past and future during British romantic period. However, it is not until the twentieth century that Keats’s reputation was secured. As to ecological criticism, we could see that nature plays an important role in interpreting Keats’s poetry as he finds perpetual delight in nature. In the field of feminist criticism, Keats is thought to be emasculated by his social status and literary theory and has a feminine soul. Ecofeminism is a newly developed branch of literary criticism. Ecofeminists believe that the current global environmental degradation is a foreseeable result of patriarchal culture.Based on ecofeminist theory, this study begins with a survey of nature images in his poem such as the sea, the moon and the mountain, all of which contribute to an ecological thinking in human existence. Keats constantly finds similarities between nature and women and compares nature to women in his works. Secondly, contrary to traditional western dualisms, the Keatsian dualisms regard the traditionally inferior sides of the western dualisms as being equal with the traditionally superior ones.In conclusion, the ecofeminist study of Keats not only finds him an ecologist and ecofeminist (though not a sound ecofeminist who participated in equal right movements), but also a prominent poet of daring vision that challenges readers of generations to come. However, because of the limitation of time, space and money, this thesis is far from being holistic. What this thesis endeavors to do is to arouse the academic interest in analyzing Keats’s poetry from a new perspective, and to offer a few commonp lace remarks by way of introduction, so that others may come up with more valuable opinions.