John-Keats.com Allowing Nonsense In Their Forums!!!

I'm not terribly knowledgable of Keats, but my impression is that the Romantics weren't a terribly rational bunch to begin with. Romanticism is commonly described as being a sort of reaction to the Enlightenment such that Romantics were more concerned with emotions and intuition than they were with cold hard fact. Romanticism produced some really beautiful stuff, but skeptics they were not. (Free thinkers, probably, but not skeptics.) Thus, I don't see how you can really figure that nonsense on a Keats fansite should be any more of an affront than nonsense on any other of the billions of websites on the Internet.

(Wikipedia does mention some stuff about negative capability that supports that Keats specifically fits into this mold, but I wouldn't want to be presumptuous, since Wikipedia doesn't go into much detail and I'm not going to research deeper just for a message board posting.)
 
UserGoogol said:
I'm not terribly knowledgable of Keats, but my impression is that the Romantics weren't a terribly rational bunch to begin with. Romanticism is commonly described as being a sort of reaction to the Enlightenment such that Romantics were more concerned with emotions and intuition than they were with cold hard fact. Romanticism produced some really beautiful stuff, but skeptics they were not. (Free thinkers, probably, but not skeptics.) Thus, I don't see how you can really figure that nonsense on a Keats fansite should be any more of an affront than nonsense on any other of the billions of websites on the Internet.

(Wikipedia does mention some stuff about negative capability that supports that Keats specifically fits into this mold, but I wouldn't want to be presumptuous, since Wikipedia doesn't go into much detail and I'm not going to research deeper just for a message board posting.)
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Good point! Yes, most of the classic poets were probably more or less wooish people themselves, so that they would interest wooish readers even today isn't very weird.
 
clerihew80 said:
Which is bet is atrocious. Why is it that every male between 15 and 40 thinks they have musical talent?

Your "cow-workers" sound like spoiled, egotistical, overpaid brats. Just because their mommys and daddys put them through college, they think they're entitled to bray their pretension to the world.
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Wow, are you this pretentious to everyone, or just anonomous people on the internet? You come here looking for sympathy because your pansy-assed poetry board is full of woo, and then you attack people you've never even met? You're a worthless worm. A parasite living off the backs of the rest of us who have real jobs. Try going out and earning a living for a change, you pretentious ass. And take your whiney complaints to a board that cares.

Please remember to be civil.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: LibraryLady
 
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UserGoogol said:
(Wikipedia does mention some stuff about negative capability that supports that Keats specifically fits into this mold, but I wouldn't want to be presumptuous, since Wikipedia doesn't go into much detail and I'm not going to research deeper just for a message board posting.)
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Keats's concept of negative capability, which he described in a letter as "when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason." is essentially a literary theory he developed to account for what he saw as the lack of solipsism in great poets. A poet, in Keats's conception, is the servant of his unfettered imagination. "What shocks the virtuous philosopher," he wrote elsewhere, "delights the chameleon Poet."

The important point to remember about Negative Capability is that it is a literary concern. It does not make or support claims about empirically observable reality. It should not be considered woo.
 
Getting back to the OP.

How does saying John Keats is a typical scorpio, in anyway attack his literatury stature, his personality and the cultural value of his work?

I would have understood the outrage had the person on the other board claimed that John Keats work shown that he was a follower of astrology.

But as far as I can tell they didn't.
 
kmortis said:
We care, just not about you and your whiny complaints.
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Well, at least you spelled "whiny" correctly this time.

How does saying John Keats is a typical scorpio, in anyway attack his literatury stature, his personality and the cultural value of his work?
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It doesn't, really. I may have overreacted in some of my posts. I suppose I was venting my frustration with the literary community in general. It's offensive to me that so many of my fellow poetry buffs are scientifically and historically illiterate.
 
kmortis said:
...snip..

Please remember to be civil.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: LibraryLady
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The irony here is that the issue was his over incensed reaction to something fairly trivial.
 
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I'm finding it difficult to get worked up about this, clerihew, but let me know when they start bashing Ode to (on) a Grecian Urn and then, perhaps, I can work up some real indignance.
 
LashL said:
I'm finding it difficult to get worked up about this, clerihew, but let me know when they start bashing Ode to (on) a Grecian Urn and then, perhaps, I can work up some real indignance.
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If that happens, you might even work up some indignation.

Skeptics are phonies, and their concerns are trivial.
 
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