|
|
Article: "The food of my delighted fancy": another echo of Lucrece in Keats.(John Keats, "The Rape of Lucrece")
- Article from:
- ANQ
- Article date:
- June 22, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
One of Keats's most memorable passages on poetic influence occurs in his sonnet on this topic, "How many bards gild the lapses of time!" Of his favorite poets, Keats says he "could brood / Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime:" (3-4)
And often, when I sit me down to rhyme,
These will in throngs before my mind intrude:
But no confusion, no disturbance rude
Do they occasion; 'tis a pleasing chime. (5-8)
As John Kerrigan has shown, one of the poems Keats brooded over most intensely was Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece, and Keats's line about poets intruding in throngs before his mind as he sits down to rhyme recalls and audaciously ...