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Keats and Scepticism explores Keats's affinity with the philosophical tradition of scepticism and reads Keats's poetry anew in the light of this affinity.
List of contents
Introduction
Keats's sceptical poetics
The term 'scepticism'
Romantic scepticism
Structure of this book
Chapter One Keats and Pyrrhonian Scepticism: Sextus Empiricus
Sceptic: non-dogmatic and investigative
Scepticism: definition and key elements
Sextus, Keats, and Medicine
Sceptical language and sceptical poetics
Keats's self-reflexive sceptical poetics in
LamiaChapter Two Keats and Renaissance Scepticism: Montaigne
Montaigne's inheritance of Pyrrhonian scepticism
Montaigne's development of Pyrrhonian scepticism
Keats and Montaigne: affinitive ideas
Keats's sceptical 'essays': the 1819 spring odes
Montaigne in the Keats circle
Montaigne, Shakespeare, and
HamletKeats and
HamletIntersection of Keats,
Hamlet, and Montaigne
Chapter Three Keats and Enlightenment scepticism: Voltaire
Voltaire, Keats, and Keats's circle
Voltaire's scepticism in
Philosophical DictionaryVoltaire's historiography and
HyperionVoltaire's
conte philosophique and
IsabellaChapter Four Keats and Enlightenment scepticism: Hume
Hume, Keats, and Hazlitt
Hume's scepticism about our understanding of the external world and 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'
Hume's scepticism about our notion of the self and
King StephenExcessive scepticism and
The Fall of HyperionTemperate scepticism in 'To Autumn'
Afterword
About the author
Li Ou, PhD in English (Literary Studies), the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is Associate Professor in the Department of English, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is the author of
Keats and Negative Capability (2009), 'Keats, Sextus Empiricus, and Medicine' (
Romanticism 22:2 (2016), 167-76), 'Keats's Afterlife in Twentieth-Century China' (
English Romanticism in East Asia: A Romantic Circles PRAXIS Volume, 2016), 'Romantic, Rebel, and Reactionary: The Metamorphosis of Byron in Twentieth-Century China' (
British Romanticism in Asia, 2019), 'Two Chinese Wordsworths: The Reception of Wordsworth in Twentieth-Century China' (
Romantic Legacies: Transnational and Transdisciplinary Contexts, Routledge, 2019), and 'Keats, Montaigne, and Hamlet' (
East-West Dialogues: The Transferability of Concepts in the Humanities, 2021). Her research interests include Romantic poetry, especially that of Keats, and cultural/literary relations between Greater China and Britain.
Summary
Keats and Scepticism explores Keats’s affinity with the philosophical tradition of scepticism and reads Keats’s poetry anew in the light of this affinity.
