John Keats: The Significance of Dreams

The presence of dreams/imagination was a popular rhetoric in the Romanticism era. Dream sequences helped tap into emotions and fears of readers/poets by transmitting them to the lives of fictional characters. In this regard, Keats was known for employing this trope in many Odes and Ballads. His precise reasoning is unknown, but it can possibly reflect back on his real life experiences. The emotional toll of losing both his mother and brother to tuberculosis, weighed heavily on Keats. Creating dream sequences in his poetry has helped him escape from his inner demons. Additionally, the frequent dream sequence can refer back to Keats’ terminology “Chameleon poet”, where one changes their surroundings temporarily and image having different personas to hide away from the real world.

Carol Yao’s A Passage from Adam's Dream to the Cessation of Desire: A Buddhist Reading of John Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale, hypothesized that John Keats has “a sustained interest in dreams and quest motifs throughout his career, which bespeaks his concerns with the nature of human agency in a narrative of atonement and self-redemption”. The theme of dreaming is heavily conveyed in Ode to a Nightingale. Keats has the speaker of the poem in a desolate state of mind and the only things that would help him get out of this slumber is suicide, drugging himself or intoxication. Suddenly, he hears the singing of an opaque Nightingale and becomes very inspired to achieve this pinnacle of happiness that this creature encapsulates. The speaker realizes that the bird’s carefree spirit is due to the absence of any need to escape the hardships that define mankind and thus has the ability to fly away from anything that doesn’t bring joy. In so doing, he imagines himself sprouting wings to join the bird in flight, “Away! Away! For I will fly to thee/ Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards/ But on the viewless wings of Poesy” (Keats 31-33). At the end of the poem, the speaker snaps back into reality by shouting the word “Forlorn”. The speaker then realizes that this melancholy was achieved through the power of dreaming or imagination.

​Scholar Jason Mauro suggests that Ode on a Grecian Urn “is a site for ritual transformation of the reader, where we are allowed to participate in a transformative vision, rather than witness a poet’s dream”. It is true that The Ode doesn’t reflect on someone’s dream, however Keats do invoke on dreamlike qualities by personifying the images on the urn, “Forever piping songs…For ever panting…All breathing human passion far above…A burning forehead, and a parching tongue” (Keats). Additionally, Keats envisions that unlike humans, the figures in this illusion will always be youthful and beautiful “Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss... She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss / For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!”. The final stanza expresses how the speaker has escaped from his daydream and is now back into reality. The switch from reality to fantasy makes him to remember that when his generation passes on, the art on the urn will always be available for the newer generation and those people can imagine their own interpretations of the urn as they wish.

Judith Weismann criticizes that “La Belle Dame sans Merci' is “so bare, so haunting, so close to the world of magic and fairy tales” and indeed it was. Keats constructs this ballad around dreamlike phenomena, such as fairies and Elfin Grots. ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci' adopts this technique of negative fiction to present the complex relation between dreaming and waking, transcendental sublimity and the transient world of ordinary experience. When the knight first lay eyes on the supernatural creature, he is clearly infatuated “Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild”. The imagery represents a setting where everything is melodic and full of wonder, which mimics a heavenly paradise. Eventually she abandons the Knight, therefore he is thrust into a nightmarish environment “Alone and pale loitering …'. Shortly after, the knight wakes up to realizes the bliss he once had is now gone and complains about his woe to the speaker. Keats indicates that the only way one can feel the subliminal feeling of love is only through dreaming. The fairy woman does not exist in reality, therefore it’s impossible for them to have a relationship outside of the Knight’s imagination.

“The Eve of St. Agnes' is Keats' joyful repudiation of the idea that sexual satiety or debilitation is the inevitable result of sexual experience (Weismann 14). Similarly to “La Belle, Keats argues that it’s better to experience affection in person than to experience inside of a dream. Additionally, this ballad contains vivid imagery:

All garlanded with carven imageries’

Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,

And diamonded with panes of quaint device,

Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes”. 

Keats’ probably used this technique as a method to teleport the reader into the world of Madeline and Porphyro.

The first 23 stanzas speaks on a certain reality and based on Keats’s description, this setting is no picnic. The 24th stanza starts the dream sequence and Keats portray that Madeline’s dream is subliminal juxtaposed to reality on earth.. Her fantasy is interrupted with Porphyro’s lute-playing and she’s becomes disappointed that she had to escape from her “spiritual perfection”. Then she realizes that Porphyro is her “dream come true” in a literal sense and then they run off together. After the two lovers escape, Keats switches back to reality and seemingly “curse” the castle: the Baron and his guests have nightmares; Angela dies and the Beadsman sleeps among the ashes again.

In “Ode to Melancholy” Keats comes to the conclusion where joy and pain goes hand and hand. Unlike, 'Ode to a Nightingale' and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn,” where the dreamer attempts to escape from a harsh reality through imagination, Keats argues that anguish and misery should be not invaded but overcome it with the nature’s beauty “Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose/Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave/ Or on the wealth of globed peonies” (Keats 15-17). This is another Ode that doesn’t follow a dream sequence, but it has an increasingly use of imagery and intensity of sensation”. In the final stanza, Keats transforms food into literary metaphors. He can no longer “burst Joy’s grape, so using his imagination, he shifts himself to a realm where he is immortal.

To conclude, poet John Keats have often turned to poetry as a way to escape depression. Within this poetry, Dream sequences has made numerous appearances. By adapting to this trope, Keats manages to vocalize how dreaming can be a cure to the hardships that humanity faces. Additionally, Keats makes the argument that no bliss lasts forever, so it is best to imagine that happiness is eternal through inanimate objects. Similarly, Keats insinuates that it’s better to dream about love than having it in reality because that way you wouldn’t be depressed once it is gone.

​Works Cited

1. Keats, John. “Ode to Melancholy” The Longman Anthology British Literature” David Dasmoch. Pearson. New York. 2011.
2. Keats, John. “Ode to a Grecian Urn” The Longman Anthology British Literature” David Dasmoch. Pearson. New York. 2011.
3. Mauro, Jason. “The Shape of Despair: Structure and Vision in Keats's ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn.’ Nineteenth-Century Literature, vol. 52, no. 3, 1997, pp. 289–301.
4. Sperry, Stuart M. “Keats, Milton, and the Fall of Hyperion.” PMLA, vol. 77, no. 1, 1962, pp. 77–84. JSTOR.
5. Weismann, Judith. “Language Strange: La Belle Dame Sans La Merci and the language of nature.” The Georgia Review, vol. 33, no. 1, 1979, pp. 118–148. JSTOR.
6. Yang, Carol L.'A Passage from Adam's Dream to the Cessation of Desire: A Buddhist Reading of John Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale'.' Journal of Narrative Theory, vol. 48 no. 2, 2018, pp. 137-163. Project MUSE.