The Persistence of Poetry

If, as George Gissing once wrote, to like Keats is a test of fitness for understanding poetry, then the essays collected in this volume suggest that literary criticism remains a lively and vigorous endeavour. Written by a broad range of prominent scholars - senior Romanticists as well as younger critics and major poets - the essays offer a fresh reevaluation of the nature and importance of John Keats's achievement. The idealistic aesthetic or humanistic hero admired by earlier generations of readers develops into a much richer, more complex image of the poet. The product of a continuing critical dialogue, this new Keats attests not only to his own enduring appeal but to the persistent vitality of poetry itself amid the distractions of a fragmented postmodern culture.