New book on Keats and philosophy

[Cath]

Noticed today that a new book will be released soon called Keats and Philosophy: The Life of Sensations (Routledge Studies in Romanticism) by Shahidha Kazi Bari. It's out in February in the US and in March in the UK.

Here's the blurb that I found:
"John Keats remains one of the most familiar and beloved of English poets, but has received surprisingly little critical attention in recent years. This study is a fresh contribution to Keats criticism and Romantic scholarship, positioning Keats as a figure of philosophical interest who warrants renewed attention.
Exploring Keats’s own Romantic accounts of feeling and thinking, this study draws a connection between poetry and the phenomenological branches of modern philosophy. The study takes Keats’s poetic evocation of touching hands, wandering feet, beating hearts and breathing bodies as a descriptive elaboration of consciousness and a phenomenological account of experience. The philosophical terms of analysis adopted here challenge the orthodoxies of Keats scholarship, traditionally characterised by the careful historicisation of a limited canon. The philosophical framework of analysis enhances the readings put forward, while Keats’s poems, in turn, serve to give fuller expression of those ideas themselves. Using Keats as a particular case, this book also demonstrates the ways in which theory and philosophy supplement literary scholarship."

Sounds interesting! Could be rather theoretical, though...

[Saturn]

In other words, may be very academic and dry, but should still be worth reading.

[Ennis]

In other words, may be very academic and dry, but should still be worth reading.

No doubt, Saturn, on both accounts -- to those "unenlightened" folks; however, anything about Keats can never be considered "dry," to us, could it?

I just received my copy of Nicholas Roe's Fiery Heart: The First Life of Leigh Hunt and I am looking forward to reading it. I did get as far as the preface (prologue?), and the author says he has divided Hunt's life into two "sections" -- that before the death of Shelley and that after. This biography, obviously, deals with the first part, which is fine with me!!

[Cath]

anything about Keats can never be considered "dry," to us, could it?

Agreed!

[Cath]

I just received my copy of Nicholas Roe's Fiery Heart: The First Life of Leigh Hunt and I am looking forward to reading it. I did get as far as the preface (prologue?), and the author says he has divided Hunt's life into two "sections" -- that before the death of Shelley and that after. This biography, obviously, deals with the first part, which is fine with me!!

How did you like Nicholas Roe's book on Hunt, Ennis? I read Anthony Holden's The Wit in the Dungeon: The Life of Leigh Hunt (2005) and took up Roe's Fiery Heart (2005) immediately afterwards but I was suffering from Hunt fatigue and didn't make it to the end...