Contexts of Production
You could refer to:
1. Keats’s relationship with Fanny Brawne:
In July 1818, Keats wrote:
... I am certain I have not a right feeling towards Women--at this moment I am striving to be just to them but I cannot—
When among Men I have no evil thoughts, no malice, no spleen--I feel free to speak or to be silent--I can listen and from every one I can learn--my hands are in my pockets I am free from all suspicion and comfortable. When I am among Women I have evil thoughts, malice spleen--I cannot speak or be silent--I am full of Suspicions and therefore listen to no thing--
Keats wrote Fanny Brawne a flood of notes and letters until March 1820. His expressions of love and its joys are mixed with pain and death
"I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks;" he wrote to her, "...your loveliness, and the hour of my death“
Contexts of Production specific to Lamia:
} Lamia was written in the late summer of 1819.
} Keats’ brother had died; he was living in London next door to Fanny Brawne in Wentworth Place.
} Brawne lived with her mother and their landlord was Charles Brown, one of Keats’ closest friends and Keats’ own flatmate.
Charles Brown
} Keats lived with Brown for 18 months after his brother died in 1818.
} Brown nursed Keats after he haemorrhaged in 1820, when Keats was advised to avoid any heightened emotion… so Brown kept them apart.
} Brown was not happy about Keats’s relationship with Fanny Brawne and discouraged it.
} Why?
} Perhaps out of jealousy because she consumed much of Keats's time and thought. Perhaps, too, he understood the depth of Keats's feelings and Fanny's casual, flirtatious attitude with other men (Brown included) indicated a far more shallow attachment on her part. They noticed her teasing behaviour and the depression and jealousy it aroused in Keats. Distracted by such antics, how could Keats write?
} Keats's own state of mind is evident from his letter of 1 November 1820 to Charles Brown. 'I am afraid to write to her - to receive a letter from her - to see her hand writing would break my heart - even to hear of her any how, to see her name written would be more than I could bear,' he told his friend.
} Brown noticed her teasing behaviour and the depression and jealousy it aroused in Keats. Distracted by such antics, how could Keats write? And how could his weakened body cope?
(Remember, Keats suffered from tuberculosis from early 1820; died in Feb 1821) – cf: the male lovers in ‘La Belle’ and the power women hold over men. On account of Keats’s illness you could argue that the contexts of production of his poetry accentuate how the women in his poems (& in his own life) can be presented as both beautiful and dangerous.
See P76-78 in York Notes for additional info.
2. Romanticism and the championing of the imagination.
} In Romantic vision, the imagination - inspired by nature- could overcome or ease human suffering.
} However, you could suggest that such insistence on the power of the imagination is dangerous as the knight-at-arms experiences first hand.
3. Historical position of knights (chivalric code); fairies (their tendencies to be associated with eroticism despite being beautiful).
4. The form Keats’s poems take – e.g. The use of Spenserian stanza in ‘Eve’ allows Keats to develop highly pictorial images of women and gives him the narrative freedom to juxtapose both their beauty and potential danger.
NB: The form Keats’s poems take are especially important to address in questions were A02 is assessed – i.e. Section A Part A and Section B.
Contexts of Reception:
Consider questions such as:
- What ideas would you say are most important in Keats’s poem?
- What in the end are his poems saying?
- Why should we still read them today?
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