John Keats And T.S.Eliot: A Comparative Approach To Their Poetics

John Keats and T. S. Eliot, the two literary figures as well as their respective poetics, are frequently discussed and analyzed. Many critics have found kinship in their respective theories, "Negative Capability" and "Impersonality", and attached great importance to their similarities. However, the enormous divarications of their theories are hardly mentioned and discussed. This paper, through a thorough investigation of John Keats's poetics scattered in his letters, and of T. S. Eliot's "Impersonality" theory, as well as a detailed comparison between them, attempts to expose their great discrepancies.Keats takes intensity, unobtrusiveness and naturalness as distinctive features of good poetry, and accentuates that the poet should give full rein to his imagination, possess a "Negative Capability", and obscure his identity while composing poetry; Eliot takes the relationship of the artist and tradition as primary consideration, distinguishes the personal emotions and experience from the artistic ones, and seeks to suppress the emotions of the artist or transfer them into the universal emotions through the use of "Objective Correlative."They share some common ideas about artistic creation, such as their mutual opposition to the Wordsworthian self-centered contemplation, and moral preachment, and their plausible common proposition for the absence of the identity of the poet or artist himself in poetic creation. However, their great divarications are by no means to be neglected. Eliot sees tradition as an amalgamation of Christianity and culture,pursues the balanced and universal beauty through the moderation of intellect and reason, and views the poem as an organic unit; Keats stresses nature and the importance of human sensations in poetic composition, firmly advocates the heartfelt emotions gained through communication with the objects being observed, and preaches the poet's maintenance of disinterestedness so as to break away from the worldly obstacles, and transform his emotions free from the disturbance of moral preachment.Furthermore, this paper offers several factors contributing to their discrepancies as well. For Eliot, his strong religious belief, his understanding of society and culture, his philosophic concern, his antipathy of the material subjectivity as well as his preference for the Metaphysical poets all help shape his "Impersonality" theory, whereas for Keats, his early medical training and scientific education, his disbelief in Christianity, his emphasis on imagination as a transcendence over worldly obstacles, and the influence of Shakespeare and Wordsworth all account for the formation of his "Negative Capability" theory and other theories.All respects considered, the oversimplified identification of their theories is far-fetched and absurd, and the great discrepancies of their theories are by no means to be ignored. Therefore, a balanced view of the similarities and differences between Keats & Eliot will help us avoid uncalled-for and unreasonable oversimplifications of their respective poetics.