政大機構典藏-National Chengchi University Institutional Repository(NCCUR):Item 140.119/121446

政大典藏 > College of Foreign Languages and Literature > Department of English > Periodical Articles > Item 140.119/121446

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://nccur.lib.nccu.edu.tw/handle/140.119/121446

Title:	A Passage from Adam’s Dream to the Cessation of Desire: A Buddhist Reading of John Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’
Authors:	楊麗敏 Yang, Carol L.
Contributors:	英文系
Keywords:	Language;Poetics;Essays;Poetry;Writing;Consciousness;19th century;Buddhism;Letters;Keats;John (1795-1821)
Date:	2018-09
Issue Date:	2018-12-19 16:27:37 (UTC+8)
Abstract:	John Keats (1795-1821) reveals a sustained interest in dreams and quest motifs throughout his career, which bespeaks his concerns with the nature of human agency in a narrative of atonement and self-redemption. The "Ode to a Nightingale" (1819) remains a great but cryptic poem, concerned with a Keatsian preoccupation with human existence, as well as with the issues of "being-in-the-world" and "being-not-at-home" in the form of poetic trance and visionary flight.1 This poem also calls into question such renowned Keatsian concepts as "Adam`s dream," "Pleasure Thermometer," and "Negative Capability."2 On 30 September 1820 Keats wrote to Charles Brown: "Is there another Life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be we cannot be created for this sort of suffering" (Letters 2: 346).3 Uttered at the end of Keats`s life, this echoes the questions Keats`s speaker asks earlier in the "Ode to a Nightingale": "Was it a vision, or a waking dream? / Fled is that music:-Do I wake or sleep?" (79-80).4 Keats here emphasizes a pervasive sense of impermanence, suffering, and illusion as well as shifts from conventional Christian `sin` to Buddhist `suffering` as the epistemic framework for living. In no sense was Keats a doctrinaire Buddhist, but I would like to suggest that certain Buddhist concepts may shed light on some concepts in Keats`s writing.5 Keats`s "Ode to a Nightingale" embodies such Buddhist principles as the dharma and the Four Noble Truths, articulated through Buddhism`s focus on suffering and its possible antidote.
Relation:	JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory, Vol.48, No.2, pp.137-163
Data Type:	article
DOI link:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jnt.2018.0006
DOI:	10.1353/jnt.2018.0006
Appears in Collections:	[Department of English] Periodical Articles

Files in This Item:

File	Description	Size	Format
index.html		0Kb	HTML2	510	View/Open

社群 sharing

Loading...