A Study of the Concept of Indolence in the Romantic Period: John Keats' 'Ode on Indolence', A Deviation

This article will undertake a study of the concept of ‘Indolence’ in the Romantic period and also in John Keats’ “Odeon Indolence”. The study will illuminate the fact that the romantic’s concept of indolence is at odds with JohnKeats’depiction of the same concept in his “Ode on Indolence”. While the Romantics like Coleridge, Wordsworth andin America, Ralph Waldo Emerson consider ‘Indolence’, as a way for creative productions in poetry and in somerespects even more productive than activity, Keats’ depiction of ‘Indolence’ in his Ode is reminiscent of pure laziness.Keats in this Ode banishes poetry alongside with love and ambition and orders them not to return to him again. Thisstudy, while distinguishing between diligent and slumberous indolence, also puts light on the reasons Keats, himself infavor of ‘diligent indolence’, should write such an Ode so much opposing to his own and other Romantic poets’ ideasregarding the concept of indolence.

Keywords:

Indolence , the Romantics , John Keats , Ode on indolence