On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

John Keats belongs to the second generation of the Romantic poets, a movement that boasted figures such as Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Romanticism was a literary, artistic, and intellectual movement that celebrated emotions and the individual’s connection to the natural world. Romanticism began in the late 18th century and reached its peak in the first half of the 19th century, the period when the short-lived Keats was active. The movement emerged at least in part as a reaction to the rationalist ideology that prevailed during the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment of the 17th century, with the Romantics seeking to move away from the idea that humans were little more than machines governed by cold reason.

Keats’s poetry is characteristic of the preoccupations of Romanticism, with its lyrical and sensual exploration of emotional themes. Keats’s fascination with nature comes through in his vivid descriptions of landscapes such as those found in his “To Autumn.” Nature, construed as a source of inspiration, spiritual connection, and transcendence, occupied a privileged place in the works of other Romantic poets as well. But Romanticism was also heavily drawn by the allure of the past, especially the ancient past.