Sid13 wrote:Cybele, I know what you mean by an excess of minutia in the Roe biography, although it did not annoy me so much as his strained attempts to make his minutia relevant. For example, he declares (without any evidence to back up his claim) that Keats derived the images of the titans in Hyperion from two statues at the gates of Bedlam, and that the Temple of Saturn in The Fall of Hyperion has a dome because Keats had seen the domed roof of a bookstore called the Temple of the Muses. It seems to me that Roe was trying too hard to be original, to say something about Keats that hadn't been said before.
(To be fair to Roe, however, I was prejudiced against him in advance. I'd seen the reviews of the book and the controversy over Roe trying to reinvent Keats as a drug addict, so I read his book deliberately looking for reasons to dislike it.)
Yes, Sid13, Roe certainly can jump to conclusions!
I deliberately didn't read any reviews so as not to unfairly judge it ahead of time. In retrospect, I surely should have!
I bought a hardcover copy, quickly realized that the print was too small for me to read comfortably, bought and downloaded a Kindle version, and have started the darn book at least three times! I become so bored with it (I actually fall asleep trying to read it!) that I give up and read something else.
However, one thing I will say in the book's defense is that the question of Keats's shortened apprenticeship and seemingly swift appointment as a dresser at Guy's has been answered to my satisfaction.
I don't think there's any serious disagreement that Keats's apprenticeship did not go the entire five years.This is usually attributed to Keats having been a somewhat hot-headed adolescent. Roe convincingly argues that Hammond released his young apprentice because of his own ill health. (I think Roe even says that Hammond died while Keats was still at Guy's.) Again, according to Roe, Keats may have audited coursework without becoming an official student of Guy's medical school. Thus, he would have been known to the faculty at the school. That "missing" fifth year of his apprenticeship was fulfilled -- but it was fulfilled at the hospital.
The appointment of Keats to a dressership so soon after he enrolled officially as a student is often explained with a "Well, Keats was really, really smart." And when I read this I just can't help picturing out guy as some almost-primordial Hermione Granger-type -- so crazily precocious that he could almost be in two places at the same time.
Again, anyone else have some thoughts on this?