"Eyes do Offices of Truth": John Keats's Reading of The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare
Additional Funding Sources
This project was supported by Boise State University.
Presentation Date
7-2018
Abstract
John Keats's first serious engagement with Shakespeare's plays came in his 7-volume set of The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare. Heavily marked in Keats's hand, the surviving set illustrates how he became one of the great British writers in his short lifetime. His immersion in Shakespeare's ideas, imagery, and style contributed to his philosophy and practices as a writer. This can be seen in his attention to Shakespeare's varied metaphors, similes, diction, and profound meditations on love, life, humanities, and other timeless subjects. Our poster presentation will consist of three different sections addressed on three separate posters: (1) the methodology by which we transcribed and encoded Keats's marginalia to Shakespeare in XML for purposes of analysis and data visualization, (2) word frequencies, quantities, and trends in Keats's marginalia and his references to Shakespeare in surviving letters, and (3) the impact of his marginalia to Shakespeare on his own poetic works. Providing previously unknown insights, our visualizations from raw data of Keats's reading of Shakespeare lay bare the process by which literary genius is born.
"Eyes do Offices of Truth": John Keats's Reading of The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare
John Keats's first serious engagement with Shakespeare's plays came in his 7-volume set of The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare. Heavily marked in Keats's hand, the surviving set illustrates how he became one of the great British writers in his short lifetime. His immersion in Shakespeare's ideas, imagery, and style contributed to his philosophy and practices as a writer. This can be seen in his attention to Shakespeare's varied metaphors, similes, diction, and profound meditations on love, life, humanities, and other timeless subjects. Our poster presentation will consist of three different sections addressed on three separate posters: (1) the methodology by which we transcribed and encoded Keats's marginalia to Shakespeare in XML for purposes of analysis and data visualization, (2) word frequencies, quantities, and trends in Keats's marginalia and his references to Shakespeare in surviving letters, and (3) the impact of his marginalia to Shakespeare on his own poetic works. Providing previously unknown insights, our visualizations from raw data of Keats's reading of Shakespeare lay bare the process by which literary genius is born.
Comments
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