Philosophical Aristocrat And Political Dissenter

Philosophical Aristocrat and Political Dissenter-The Political Identity of Coleridge and Keats endowed by Shakespeare grapples with a new aspect in a comparison of Shakespeare’s significance evident in both writers. Based on the extant and recent criticism of Shakespeare’s poetic influence on the two poets, the present study aims to explore how they historicize Shakespeare as a political spokesman at the beginning of the19th century. In this vein, it argues that no matter how different Coleridge’s and Keats’s political standing may be, Shakespeare to both of them is a "chameleon" model of poetic identity that would help to evade political and literary surveillance during the chaotic period.The theoretical basis of this dissertation is New Historicism which sets literary works within social and intellectual contexts. By re-reading the literary works from the angle of politics, this dissertation aims to discuss that literature can be political and Shakespeare’s canonical works, in the chaotic Romantic period, can also be read as political works. It is this political and historical Shakespeare that gives Coleridge and Keats special political standing to voice their political idea and opens up a golden age in which poetry and politics can interact with each other.Another theoretical basis of this dissertation is a reintegration of Harold Bloom’s canonical theory of influence. By challenging his Oedipal model of influence, this dissertation aims to extend the theory of poetic influence to that of politics and agree that the appropriation of the precursor by the belated in a political debate is also a successful "swerving away" from the anxiety of influence brought by the precursor’s literary works.Based on the above key points, this dissertation ends with the conclusion that to the young poets in the Romantic period, Shakespeare offers himself as "an informing spirit, a ’genius’" instead of a text, and his works become political propagandas. With Shakespeare the "chameleon" poet, both Coleridge and Keats find a way to cry out their political voice, no matter what the form is.