An Echo of Thee in the North Wind Sung' : John Keats tra i lussuriosi

The essay offers an analysis of the relationship between John Keats and Dante in the light of some recent theoretical contributions that underscore the relevance of the material dimension in the traditional study of the mutual influences between cultures. More specifically, the essay revolves around an interpretation of the sonnet As Hermes Once Took His Feathers Light, where Keats embeds the remnants of a dream he made, in which the Greek god conducts him to the second circle of Inferno. There, putting himself in the place of Paolo, he kisses the beautiful Francesca. The analysis, building on and hopefully transcending the transational framework, starts from a reading of Keats’s letters, where the genesis of the sonnet is clearly told, and then moves towards a comparison of the same poem with another work, in which Keats displays a poetic imagery where his profound knowledge of Italian cultural heritage is palpable, i.e. Isabella ; or the Pot of Basil, a longer poem which draws on a novella by Boccaccio. As the title of the essay suggests, what matters is, beyond some blatant textual parallels, the inclusion of Keats into a more generalized and conscious project of cultural appropriation of Italian literary tradition, whose English champion was Leigh Hunt, a friend and mentor of Keats’s.