SOURCE: "The Varieties of Musical Experience," in Word Like a Bell: John Keats, Music and the Romantic Poet, The Kent State University Press, 1992, pp. 29-44.

In the following essay, Minahan investigates the various functions of music in Keats's poetry, noting that music serves as an enjoyable escape, as a magical, "special" experience, and as an imaginative experience which offers insight into the ordinary. Minahan also observes the connection between music and one of Keats's most lauded ideals, truth.

Allusion as articulation: Keats's use of music as an idea, although it tells us a great deal about the poet's attitude toward music, also tells us much more. We might re-collect—bring to attention again and differently—the passage from the verse epistle "To Charles Cowden Clarke" that we examined in the preface.

 … my heart
Was warm'd luxuriously by divine Mozart,
By Arne delighted or by Handel madden'd,
Or by...