SOURCE: "John Keats's Notion of the Poetic Imagination," in Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, Vol. 20, 1987, pp. 163-77.

In the following essay, Eruvbetine examines Keats's conception of the poetic imagination, stating that to Keats, the poetic imagination enabled the poet to "suspend his rigid instinctive and egotistical identity," and to become his subject by exploring and capturing the distinctive characteristics of the subject. Eruvbetine identifies several qualities of Keats's poetic imagination and argues that Endymion illustrates the qualities and function of the imagination.

The Romantic sensibility derives its distinctness from a high sensitivity to the strength and weaknesses of the human imagination. Keats, like most other Romantics, placed high premium on, and evolved a theory of, the imagination which serves as the foundation upon which he built his poetic career. Essentially, he conceives of the poetic imagination as the faculty that enables the successful poet to suspend his rigid instinctive and...