Nature and Aesthetic Transcendence: Re-reading Romantic Consciousness in Shelley and Keats

Abstract

The paper examines the Romantic consciousness in a comparative analysis of nature and imagination in the poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats. Although Romanticism generally re-conceptualised nature as animate and spiritual, scholars have long recognised its diversity and plurality. This study examines how Shelley and Keats develop distinct yet complementary conceptions of nature and imagination. This research paper focuses on a close reading of Ode to the West Wind and To a Skylark, Ode to a Nightingale, and To Autumn, and examines how the two poets create opposing yet complementary poetic responses to nature. The methodology combines textual analysis with the important Romantic theories of imagination and aesthetic perception. The results show that Shelley imagines nature as dynamic and transformative, adopting a revolutionary imagination, while Keats imagines nature as a realm of aesthetic transcendence, in which sensuous experience makes it possible to contemplate mortality. The paper claims that Romantic consciousness is dialectical, rather than monolithic, and moves and stays still, aspires and accepts. The study also foregrounds this contrast, emphasizing the plurality of Romantic ideology and repositioning nature as both an external force and an internalized aesthetic principle in nineteenth-century poetry.