Expressive Silence in the Poetry of Keats and Clare

This thesis seeks to show how silence is inherent to the poetic expression of John Keats (1795 – 1821) and John Clare (1793 – 1894). It attends to specific allusions to silences and gaps, the absence of voice and sound, as well as the role of form and punctuation. I concentrate on poems in which silence is encoded within acts of reading, writing, listening, and response. The introduction establishes the connections and differences between Keats’s and Clare’s treatment of silence, as well as conceptual models through which silence has been studied in literature. It draws on the critical tradition of reading for silence in works by female authors with largely female subjects. These silences have frequently been read as dynamic, enabling forces. The thesis seeks to show the extent to which such forms of silence can be observed in the poetic expression of Keats and Clare. Chapter one attends to how silence shapes a carefully considered poetic voice in Keats’s sonnets that questions where it comes from, and how it may fade. I show that the sonnets employ silence to synthesize acts of reading and response to produce this voice. The second chapter, focussing on “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” characterizes silence as the innate expressive power of the urn, as well as a medium within which the ode’s interpretive work takes place. Attention to “The Eve of St. Agnes” in chapter three shows how the poem uses silence to accord its vulnerable characters with agency. At the same time, tracing silence across the text supports a reconsideration of the gender dynamic at work in the poem. In turning from Keats to Clare, the thesis moves from silence as a part of an attuned readiness and receptiveness to silence as a product of heightened aural perception and careful listening. The focus on Clare’s use of silence enables an update to the common conception of him as a mimetic, sound-focussed poet. Thus, chapter four locates silence within his poems about nature to enlarge the critical focus on sound transcription in Clare’s poetry, showing how silences animate, respond, and give meaning to these sounds. Additionally, Clare’s repeated depictions of listening are read in a silence-centric framework to show how silence reveals much about the relationships between the different creatures that populate his nature poems. Clare’s poetry also evinces an under-studied interest in the human. A final chapter shows how silence symbolizes pre-articulate thought and unrealized feelings and experience in poems about the human mind and human relationships. Overall, I am interested in how silence forms an essential dimension of poetry. How do these poets use silence to communicate that which lies beyond the realms of language? How do Keats and Clare deploy silence in their use of form, poetic voice, and models of poetic response? I conclude that silence is a capacious, enabling medium through which the ineffable and inarticulate may be expressed and responded to.