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Keats, Hermeticism, and the Secret Societies

DOI link for Keats, Hermeticism, and the Secret Societies

Keats, Hermeticism, and the Secret Societies book

Keats, Hermeticism, and the Secret Societies

DOI link for Keats, Hermeticism, and the Secret Societies

Keats, Hermeticism, and the Secret Societies book

ByJennifer N. Wunder
Edition 1st Edition
First Published 2008
eBook Published 22 April 2016
Pub. location London
Imprint Routledge
DOI https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315590981
Pages 214 pages
eBook ISBN 9781315590981
SubjectsHumanities, Language & Literature
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Wunder, J. (2008). Keats, Hermeticism, and the Secret Societies. London: Routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315590981

Jennifer Wunder makes a strong case for the importance of hermeticism and the secret societies to an understanding of John Keats's poetry and his speculations about religious and philosophical questions. Although secret societies exercised enormous cultural influence during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, they have received little attention from Romantic scholars. And yet, information about the societies permeated all aspects of Romantic culture. Groups such as the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons fascinated the reading public, and the market was flooded with articles, pamphlets, and books that discussed the societies's goals and hermetic philosophies, debated their influence, and drew on their mythologies for literary inspiration. Wunder recovers the common knowledge about the societies and offers readers a first look at the role they played in the writings of Romantic authors in general and Keats in particular. She argues that Keats was aware of the information available about the secret societies and employed hermetic terminology and imagery associated with these groups throughout his career. As she traces the influence of these secret societies on Keats's poetry and letters, she offers readers a new perspective not only on Keats's writings but also on scholarship treating his religious and philosophical beliefs. While scholars have tended either to consider Keats's aesthetic and religious speculations on their own terms or to adopt a more historical approach that rejects an emphasis on the spiritual for a materialist interpretation, Wunder offers us a middle way. Restoring Keats to a milieu characterized by simultaneously worldly and mythological propensities, she helps to explain if not fully reconcile the insights of both camps.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

chapter |21 pages

Introduction

Correspondences
WithJennifer N. Wunder

chapter 1|23 pages

Historical Hermeticism and the Secret Societies

WithJennifer N. Wunder

chapter 2|21 pages

The Secret Societies and the Romantic Cultural Context

WithJennifer N. Wunder

chapter 3|28 pages

Hieroglyphics

Hermetic Recovery in Keats’s Poetry
WithJennifer N. Wunder

chapter 4|31 pages

Hermeticism in the Endymion Letters

WithJennifer N. Wunder

chapter 5|20 pages

Initiation Rites and Trials of Earth

WithJennifer N. Wunder

chapter 6|28 pages

Trials of Water and Air

WithJennifer N. Wunder

chapter |12 pages

Conclusion

“A Beacon Towards a Little Speculation”
WithJennifer N. Wunder
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