SOURCE: Trott, Nicola. “Keats and the Prison House of History.” In Keats and History, edited by Nicholas Roe, pp. 262-79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

In the following essay, Trott proposes a tension between history and poetry in Keats's writings, in part reflected in his use of prison metaphors, in which history is imagined as a constraining force on the imagination.

‘in the … Prison-house’

The poetry is for the most part ironed and manacled with a chain of facts, and cannot get free; it cannot escape from the prison house of history … Poetry must be free!

These remarks, from an unfavourable notice of Richard Duke of York, a compilation of the three parts of Henry VI, appeared in the Champion for 28 December 1817. Scholarly fact has now chained the authorship to John Hamilton Reynolds, dramatic editor of the Champion, but it was for many years thought to be by Keats...