키이츠와 셸리의 이미저리 비교 = A Comparative Analysis of Keats’ and Shelley’s Imageries

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Keats’ mature works have always been assessed very highly by the critics because of their unique qualities: the vivid concreteness of his imageries in which all the senses—gustatory, tactile, kinetic, organic as well as visual and auditory—combine to give the total apprehension of an object or atmosphere the poet contemplates. And by making the most of richly sensuous imageries Keats characteristically presented all experience as a tangle of inseparable but irreconcilable opposites.
Compared with the imageries of Keats, those of Shelley seem quite inferior in that they are more often times simple, vague, and abstract. Moreover, Shelley used to reveal somewhat adolescent aspects such as hysteria, self-pity, and emotional naivete in his poems. Thus in the 20th century revolt against romanticism he, among other romantic poets, suffered most since his poetry, charged with the mediocre imageries and adolescence, was the most vulnerable to the attacks from the ironist critics.
But shortcomings of Shelley’s imageries are accounted for by his idealistic, myth-making mind early shaped by transcendental utopianism. In short his imageries are the inevitable result of his vision. Seen in this context it is not fair to simply compare and assess the imageries of any two poets. The proper assessment of imageries should be made in terms of the functions and contributions the imageries perform in each poem. This paper is an attempt to reconsider and fairly evaluate the imageries of the two poets with focus on The Eve of St. Agnes and “Adonais.”