The Nightingale and the Hawk

This study, originally from 1964, is in effect a biographical study of one aspect of Keats¿ life of the imagination. It suggests why he became a poet, shows how his attitude to his poetry changed, how in Jungian terms he first met his `shadow¿, rejected it, then came to accept it, and how this affected his poetry. An intimate relationship between his letters and the poems is shown, along with a fresh interpretation of Endymion and of aspects of the two versions of Hyperion, Lamia, The Eve of St Agnes, and the other great odes.