Bright Star! Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art (For Further Study)

For Further Study

• Armstrong, Isabel, Language as Living Form in Nineteenth Century Poetry, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble Books, 1982.

  This book examines the culture of the ear and discusses many of the literary figures associated with Keats, including Shelly and Wordsworth, but Keats himself is hardly mentioned.

• Bernbaum, Ernest, Guide Through the Romantic Movement, New York: The Ronald Press Co., 1949.

  Bernbaum gives brief biographies of all of the most notable authors associated with Romanticism, including many who are not usually recognized as being with the group.

• Bostetter, Edward E., The Romantic Ventriloquists: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Byron, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1963.

  Bostetter’s chapter on Keats covers all of the major points of his philosophy and technique in an insightful if slightly stiff manner.

• Jones, John, John Keats’ Dream of Truth, New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1969.

  In analyzing the scope of Keats’s poetry, Jones includes an interesting comparison of the use of the eternal in “Bright Star!” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”

• Sherwin, Paul, “Dying Into Light: Keats’ Struggle with Milton in ‘Hyperion, ’” in John Keats, edited with an Introduction by Harold Bloom, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1985.

  This essay finds “Bright Star!” to be a statement of how Keats’s world view differed from that of the poet John Milton.