Abstract

This dissertation examines some of John Keats's major poems from a phenomenological and Zen Buddhist point of view. The study seeks to trace the development of Keats's relationship with desire, showing how the progress in the poems shows a changing attitude toward desire as well as parallels the development of the phenomenological ideas of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in the twentieth century. In addition, Heidegger's interest in eastern thought toward the end of his career illuminates some of the issues and resolutions that appear in Keats's later poetry. ;Chapter one provides an introduction to some of the basic terms of phenomenology with which the reader may be unaware. Chapter two provides an introduction to Husserl's phenomenology in particular and sets up connections that aid in understanding Keats's poem Endymion. Chapter three illuminates how space and time are directly linked with Endymion's desire to transcend the everyday world, providing connections with Husserlian concepts of spatial and temporal awareness. Chapter four explores the mind's relation with other minds, a particularly problematic issue in Endymion. Chapter five furthers this exploration of the Other but shows how phenomenology provides an acceptable resolution to the ending of Endymion, an ending that many critics have seen as particularly bothersome. Chapter six uses the sonnet "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles" to illustrate the transition between Endymion and Hyperion. The sonnet will also serve as an introduction to some of Heidegger's key concepts. Chapter seven moves to Heideggerean phenomenology, showing Hyperion in the context of the ideas in Being and Time. Chapter eight includes discussions on the five spring odes, "Ode to Psyche," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode on Indolence," "Ode to a Nightingale," and "Ode on Melancholy," and shows how the odes' basic themes parallel the direction Heidegger's interests took after his change in focus after Being and Time. In chapter nine, The Fall of Hyperion is shown to be moving toward some of the interests in eastern thought that Heidegger turned to later in his career, and in chapter ten, the discussion of "To Autumn" will show how this poem finds dissolution of desire by accepting the present moment. ;In exploring the paths Keats's takes in these poems, the reader can gain an insight into the fact that Keats's body of poetry as a whole can be seen as possessing its own supra-narrative: the search for resolution to and dissolution of desire