19 pages 38 minutes read

John Keats

When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1848

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Background

Literary Context: Romanticism and Modernism

Romanticism is a philosophical, literary, and artistic movement lasting from the late-18th century to the end of the 19th century. Romantic art and ideas are characterized by intense emotion; subjective experience; spirituality; imagination; and a deep reverence for the natural world. In many ways, Romanticism was a reaction against the Enlightenment ideals of pure logic, the scientific method, and physical materialism. The Romantic movement began in a period characterized by rapid social change and political turmoil, as epitomized by the French Revolution. Many Romantics held liberal views, favored societal reform, and were suspicious of existing power structures, such as social class or religious institutions. Keats’s poetic idol William Wordsworth is considered a key figure in the British Romantic movement. Contemporaries Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley are also commonly categorized as British Romantics. Like his fellow Romantics, Keats’s poetry often explores the natural world, the lone individual, dreams and visions, and grand, complex emotions.

Modernism is a later philosophical, literary, and artistic movement lasting from the late-19th century to the mid-20th century. Like Romanticism, the Modernist movement was shaped by social change, industrialization, and scientific progress. Modernism has a less unified aesthetic than Romanticism, being broadly characterized by a desire to break with tradition and to attain self-knowledge in an increasingly unfamiliar world.

Related Titles

By John Keats

Study Guide

logo

Endymion

John Keats

Endymion: A Poetic Romance

John Keats

Study Guide

logo

La Belle Dame sans Merci

John Keats

La Belle Dame sans Merci

John Keats

Study Guide

logo

Meg Merrilies

John Keats

Meg Merrilies

John Keats

Study Guide

logo

Ode on a Grecian Urn

John Keats

Ode on a Grecian Urn

John Keats

Study Guide

logo

Ode on Melancholy

John Keats

Ode on Melancholy

John Keats

Study Guide

logo

Ode to a Nightingale

John Keats

Ode to a Nightingale

John Keats

Study Guide

logo

Ode to Psyche

John Keats

Ode to Psyche

John Keats

Study Guide

logo

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

John Keats

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

John Keats

Study Guide

logo

On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

John Keats

On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

John Keats

Study Guide

logo

The Eve of St. Agnes

John Keats

The Eve of St. Agnes

John Keats