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Essay / Adoration for Art in the Poems of John Keats and Christina Rossetti
Table of ContentsIntroductionAnalysisBibliographyIntroduction John Keats's "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" and Christina Rossetti's "In An Artist's Studio" both address similar themes; adoration for art, whether his own in Rossetti's poem, or the art of others in Keats's, Keats admiring George Chapman's translation of Homer. But there is a marked difference in tone: the first poem is more appreciative of the art form, a reflection on wonder and the “realms of gold.” Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay This final poem seems to be a condemnation of the artist's ego and desires, evoking that Dorian Gray-like image of being entirely consumed by his art, more than that, there is also a juxtaposition between the real and the idealized, the woman as she "fulfills her dream". In this sense, both poems could surely be seen as an appreciation of art, but Rossetti's poem is much more narcissistic. Further similarities are found in the fact that both poems are Petrarchan sonnets, so stylistically they are also similar, but differ greatly in subject matter. Analysis In the first poem we first understand the extent to which Keats appreciates art through the aforementioned metaphor "realms of gold", but it is initially unclear to us whether this supposed journey is literal or figuratively, if we don't glance at the title. The feeling of awe and wonder is easily spread throughout, consider in lines 6 and 7 the words "serene" and the half rhyme "dense", there is a use of grandiose language throughout, elevating the arts to something divine in nature. The poem in comparison is also about putting art on a pedestal, but in its case, the artist projects his idealistic wife onto the model he paints. There is both a feeling of lack of identity on the part of the model, of the "nameless" girl, and this almost vampiric use of language which projects onto her the desires of the artist, and the "need to feeding on his face.” Again, like Keats's, the poem uses a lot of divine imagery; “saint”, “angel”, “queen”. Is it a comment on the sublime beauty that can be found in the hard, as Keats does with Chapman's Homer, or is it in reference to the way a man can idolize a person, or art, in unrealistic proportions? Both interpretations are surely valid, but I lean more towards the second because the language used in Rossetti's poem constantly reinforces this idea of expectations. Rossetti's poem is told in the third person plural, using the word "we", perhaps the "we" is representative of the reader, and we tend to come to poetry with preconceived ideas about what that we want to see, most likely the "we" is the artist himself, if we view the poem as a critique of the artistic ego in general. Keats in his poem makes many references to classical literature and mythology, this makes sense as the poem is about admiring art, the Homeric language compliments the thematic elements of searching for new and amazing places, the Cortez's "wild guess" finding the New World, a metaphor for Keats having discovered this new translation of Homer. His reaction is almost drowned out by fear, "silent on a Darien peak" observing this new world before him. This fits with the impressionistic nature of Romantic poetry. This particular, silent line also disrupts the iambic meter of the poem, which would once again attract more, 1996)