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‘Do I wake or sleep?’
A course on the poetry of John Keats
with Barbara Vellacott
Does beauty lull us to sleep or awaken us? How might it be true that ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty’, as one of Keats’s poems famously says?
Through reading Keats’s poems, we shall explore the ambiguities of ‘waking’ and ‘sleeping’ so vividly expressed in them, and awaken to our own thoughts
and responses.
DATES: Saturday mornings 10 am – 12.45
October 2, 16, & 30, November 13 & 27
COST: £60, including refreshments. Concessions available.
DETAILS: Phone 01235 848433; email barbaralv@btinternet.com.
BOOKING: Send a cheque for £60, or £15 deposit, to
Barbara Vellacott at 31 Church Street, Sutton Courtenay, OX14 4NJ
Keats is famous for the sensuous richness of his poetry, his love for Fanny Brawne, and for his painful death when only 25 and far from home. He has been portrayed as a frail and tragic romantic. But he was a poet who enjoyed lively company, whose friends were social radicals, and who called himself ‘a citizen of the world.’ Through poetry he hoped to ‘do some good’ in a world where ‘the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand ways.’
Whatever you know – or don’t know – about this early 19th century poet, do feel welcome to the group, and find new depths to the universal themes of beauty, truth, love, transience and death through poetry, as well as the enjoyment of reading with others.
From time to time we shall read some more modern poems to bring fresh perspective to these themes.
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