title: Keats's oral imagination: "'Tis not through envy".
abstract: This study of four of Keats's greatest poems explores a dynamic pattern in the poet's imagination: a relationship between the oral/fusional imagery and the romantic/oedipal themes. The poet's imagination seems to have been propelled backward from oedipal conflict to earlier narcissistic/oral unrest and pleasure. There is a layering of special psychic capabilities evident in Keats's imagination: an element of oedipal romance which stabilizes the process of sublimation, a sense of magical play and danger in the maternal/oral imagery, and powerful narcissistic longins organized through the desire to communicate and the gift for expression.
mesh_terms: D001009:Anxiety, Castration / Q000523:psychology; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology; D005201:Fantasy; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008149:Love; D009289:Narcissism; D009813:Oedipus Complex; D009913:Oral Stage; D011037:Poetry as Topic; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D011606:Psychosexual Development