ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book renovates a truth about John Keats that has once more become obscured from view. It investigates the strategic infantilism of the poet. The book begins by casting in bold political relief the predominantly unconscious operations of Keats's childish conception. It explores how his work – which a contemporary reviewer recognized was 'involved in ambiguity' – often teeters deliberately and self-consciously on the edge of puerility. The book also explores the proposition that while Keats the maturing son longed to 'find his voice' – the 'mighty voice of Apollo', as he puts it in I Stood Tip-toe – he also wished to retain the youthful intonations of 'whining boyhood'. It examines Keats's possession of ostensibly discrete traditions of knowledge regarding women's physiological 'reality'.
