ABSTRACT
The apparently trivial incident in this chapter appears to have been one of the most significant, and embarrassing, of Keats’s literary career. The swapping of laurel crowns with Leigh Hunt epitomised Keats’s ambivalent feelings about the role of the poet and, retrospectively, his ambivalent feelings about Leigh Hunt. At a time when Keats was making the important decision to devote himself to writing fulltime, the crowning symbolised all that a poet should be and do. It linked Keats with a long tradition of bards, about which he was always to be very self-conscious, and it involved the public display and search for fame which he considered was part of the business of being a poet. The political animosity behind the memoir is evident in the reference to Hunt’s and Keats’s uncravated state, a fashion of the Cockney poets noted by one biting review.
