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Mastery and Melancholy in Suburbia

2009/06/01 by Andrea Henderson · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · #Poetry Analysis and Criticism

paper · doi:10.1353/ecy.0.0034

openalex publication_date 2009/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

This Essay argues that the emotional character John Keats's poetry developed in an agonized attempt to reconcile two aesthetic modes that were themselves responses to contemporary conceptions of ownership and consumption. The first of these aethetic modes (the synoptic), makes intensive use of space in order to simulate a masterful form of possession. The second (the ephemeral) privileges temporal intensity, and mimics the consumption of ephemera, which we most closely associate with the affective tone of Keats's most important poetry.

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