Keats the Poet [Paperback]

Keats the Poetwas first published in 1973, just as the crest of all the New-Critical exegeses had passed, leaving the critical literature with a wealth of fine readings, but without a real organizing program within which to view them. Stuart Sperry established such a frame of reference. Further, he did so with such prescience that even the most radical deconstructive or new historical approaches to Keats today must bear witness to their inception in Sperry's emphasis on, and subtle demonstration of, the centrality of indeterminacy' in the poet. Now available in paperback for the first time, this work will enlighten a new generation of readers.

Stuart M. Sperryis Professor of English at Indiana University. A book of great and possibly final importance in Keats studies. . . . Among comprehensive critical studies of the past twenty years, Stuart M. Sperry'sKeats the Poethas been a standard reference, rooted in mainstream criticism but pointing the way to much that became central in the revisionary criticism of the years since its publication. ---Walter H. Evert and Jack W. Rhodes,MLA This is still simply the best book written on Keats. With a figure as important and as consistently attractive to students as Keats, to have written a book that has stood unrivalled for a generation is a real distinction. Stuart Curran, University of Pennsylvania This study has yet to be superseded in studies of Keats. Susan Wolfson, Princeton University