The Representations of Nothingness as a Place in Keats’s Poetry

الملخص

This paper addresses the theme of Keats and place in which I explore the problem of Keats and no place. The existence of “no place” is a key element in the poetry of John Keats. One of the obvious manifestations of “no place” is the use of nothingness which occupies a particular symbolic significance in his works. In my paper, I argue that Keats’s poems show evidence that the poet featured nothingness as a place which is characterized by emptiness and void where things fall and disappear forever. The abstract state of nothingness is represented as a hateful and undesired destination that the poet does not want to be placed in. The paper focuses on the representations of nothingness in three selected poems: “Sleep and Poetry,” “Endymion,” and “When I Have Fears,” respectively. In these poems, Keats constructs nothingness as a “locus” which is associated with negativity and passivity. My paper suggests another possible reading of Keats’s poems in relation to the themes of place and space.