ABSTRACT
In an essay on John Keats (1795–1821), first published in 1966, Paul de Man suggests that this English poet should be regarded as a ‘prospective’ writer. By this he means to contrast him with poets whose work is ‘retrospective’, such as William Wordsworth (1770–1850). He proposes that Keats’s work ‘consists of hopeful preparations, anticipations of future power rather than meditative reflections on past moments of insight and harmony’ (de Man 1989, 181). Keats’s work, he suggests, is ‘totally oriented toward the future’ (183). The critical phrase most often associated with de Man’s own work is ‘blindness and insight’, and it has been often said that this entails a deconstructive logic: every literary, critical or philosophical text is a work of blindness and insight, in which the moments of greatest authorial insight are characteristically moments of blindness, or vice versa (see de Man 1983). His characterization of Keats is thought-provoking in this respect. The notion of the prospective writer perhaps requires to be taken with a pinch of mellow fruitfulness, for the work of every writer can no doubt be construed in these terms. But as de Man’s essay makes clear, it is certainly a critically illuminating thesis in the case of Keats.
