Evaluate Keats As an Escapist

Answer

Do you think Keats wants to escape from reality? Justify your answer from your study of Keats.

Or, Evaluate Keats as an escapist. 

John Keats (1795-1821), a renowned English Romantic poet, is often associated with the escapist tendencies of the Romantic movement. An escapist is a person who tries to avoid the harsh realities of life and wants to escape into the ideal world. The ideal world is a world of imagination where life is full of enjoyment and free from all difficulties. However, Keats accepts the world as it is and returns to the world of reality.

“Ode to a Nightingale”: The poem “Ode to a Nightingale” (1819) starts with the effect of Nightingale’s song on the body and heart of the poet. To him, the song of the Nightingale is a symbol of everlasting joy. For this reason, being dissatisfied with the hard realities of real life, he wants to take shelter in the dream forest with the help of Nightingale’s song. In his imaginative forest, he finds all the pleasures and enjoyment that he would like to have in the ideal world. As the poet says,

That I might drink and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim.

However, by the word “forlorn,” Keats came back to the world of reality from the world of imagination. Because the poet believes that the world of imagination can shelter us for a short time and cannot give us the solution to the hard realities of life. In the poet’s tongue,

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self.

“Ode on a Grecian Urn”: In the poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1819), Keats describes the eternal beauty of art and immortalizes the objects that have been carved on the Urn. There are pictures of the youth and maiden lovers and beloveds, pipers, and trees. The piper is always piping under the tree. The