Submissions for the Critical Analysis category should critically evaluate or analyze a piece of literature, a theatrical performance, a work of visual art, a historical moment, a philosophical argument, a social movement, etc. Submissions should not exceed 20 pages. Elanor Spring wrote the 2nd place submission in the Critical Analysis Category for the 2025 President’s Writing Awards.
About Elanor
Elanor Spring is a poet and translator. Currently, she’s a fourth-year undergraduate pursuing double Bachelors of Arts in French and Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry. Her original poetry is concerned with the architecture of the line as the material that builds relation between ourselves and the natural world. When translating, she aims to bring poems by contemporary Francophone women poets into English. After graduating, she plans to pursue a MA in Poetry and Poetics at the University of Maine. Outside of writing, she enjoys walks along the Boise river, cutting her own hair, and baking for friends. She’s honored to be selected for the President’s Writing Award and appreciates all those who have lent their support to her work!
Winning Manuscript – Truth and Imagination: The Poetic Theories of William Blake and John Keats
The British Romantic period of poetry, which began in 1785 and ended in 1835, produced significantly ingenious and fervent writings to define the poet’s role as an artist and what poetry should strive to accomplish. Chronologically following the Age of Enlightenment, which emphasized rationality, the Romantic Era gave rise to a prioritization of truth and imagination. This is best exemplified by the theoretical poetics and poetry of William Blake (1757-1827) and John Keats (1795-1821), who loosely framed Romanticism at the beginning and end, respectively. In William Blake’s half-prophetic, half-apocalyptic book-length poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, published in 1790, his mystic aphorisms both make claims about poetry’s purpose through the aforementioned elements and embody them in the same breath. Similarly, in John Keats’s 1817 correspondence Letter to Benjamin Bailey, he advocates for imagination’s power in identifying and relating truth and beauty. This poetic belief is brought to fruition in “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” composed in 1819, which portrays all three traits. Although Blake and Keats approached their theories on truth differently in their work, both poets stress the necessity of truth and imagination as essential for their energetic poetry.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell typifies William Blake’s propensity towards the strange and the religious, combining poetry, prose, and proverbs into a book-length poem that establishes and epitomizes the poet’s ideas about truth and imagination. In so doing, the poem acts as a crucible, melting and molding Blake’s poetics until his theories about poetry are inextricably bound to the poem itself. Perhaps the strongest indication of this is in the section “Proverbs of Hell,” in which Blake lists brief but poignant verses which encapsulate the Romantic elements of poetry. The power of these verses is their ability to contain the multiplicity of poetry, for example, in Plate 8 of the text, Blake writes, “Every thing possible to be believed is an image of truth” (216). This observation suggests that truth finds its roots in imagination, (literally in the image of truth) rather than truth itself. Rather, truth must begin in the imagination, must be thought of before being established on its own. To this end, truth exists not as itself, but as its own image, and only in its ability to be imagined can it be believed. Moreover, this line contains the premise of the text overall, verbalizing Blake’s approach to the “Proverbs” in that he must first imagine the poetry/statements and then go about establishing their truth.
Blake’s poetic theory on truth and imagination is indicated as part of “Proverbs”, indeed, each proverb refracts as its own theory as part of the greater poem. Throughout the work, the poet applies the theories on truth and imagination to his lines as they are created. Thus, Blake remarks that truth on its own cannot be told and therefore believed: first it must be imagined as possible. The hearer of truth must first imagine a true statement as part of their experience and worldview, and must resonate with it on a level separate from the statement alone. Blake completes this aphorism by ending the “Proverbs” with the line, “Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed. / Enough! or Too much” (217). The energy of this line resonates with and informs the prior statement on truth by further complicating the role of truth insofar as it can be relayed. Here, Blake verbalizes the complexity of truth – outright, it cannot be understood and believed from the beginning of its articulation. Instead, it must forever be in a state of flux- definitely enough or inordinate, but never conclusive. Hence, Blake posits that truth must first be imagined, and then in this line defines what truth is not capable of, leaving truth’s possibilities open to both overwhelm and lack. This line harkens back to Blake’s statement that the image of truth is what can be believed: The final cry of “Enough! Or Too much.” puts truth in the difficult position of being insufficient and unable to be articulated without the power of imagination.
Similarly to William Blake, John Keats expounded upon theories of truth and imagination in relation to poetry, however, the latter’s perspective included the importance of beauty as a key element. In the extract from Letter to Benjamin Bailey, Keats elucidates his poetic theories on truth and imagination insofar as their role for poetry, thereby illuminating what is most essential for Romantic poems, reifying the elements into indisputable necessities. Keats explains that his musings on the manner in which poets can create works have long been a concern of his. This observation leads him to claim that he is “certain of nothing but of the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination. What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth, whether it existed before or not” (1403). In these sentences, Keats bundles together truth and imagination, asserting that imagination is a deciding factor in what the poet must attend to. Through this line of reasoning, he expands truth to contain beauty, combining the forces as inextricable from one other. For Keats, that which is beautiful is certainly true. Additionally, he provides the notion that the imagination can identify beauty and truth in new ideas just as easily as pre-existing concepts.
Indeed, imagination must be able to recognize that which is true and beautiful in order to create new writing. This striking observation creates a sense of movement between imagination, beauty, and truth which weaves the three elements together. Through this, Keats puts forth the cyclical nature of the triad- imagination must light upon beauty, which in turn must be representative of truth. Working backwards, then, truth can only be recognized through the beautiful, which then inspires the imagination to create. This theory is furthered later in the letter through a Biblical reference to the creation of woman, an act of beautiful inventiveness. Keats writes that “The imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream: he awoke and found it truth” (1403). Here, Keats provides an explanatory example of his theory that the imagination will bring about truth. The anthology footnotes explain that Adam’s dream is in Genesis 2:21-2, in which God creates Eve from Adam’s rib cage. With this knowledge, Keats’s logic is that Adam’s imagination/dream/creative ability to “come up” with the concept of beauty as embodied by Eve became a physical manifestation of truth upon his awakening. This reinforces the cyclical concept of the three elements for Keats- the imagination creates beauty (Adam dreams of Eve) which in turn becomes truth (Adam awakes and finds that Eve has been created). This example embodies the deeply complex nature of Keats’s theory while supporting the interconnectedness of those elements which are crucial to his poetry.
This application of imagination, truth, and beauty is demonstrated well in Keats’s ekphrastic poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” composed in 1819 after being inspired by a vase and marbles in museums. The poem describes the immortal scene of Greek figures and their inability to change, expounding on the gift of remaining frozen in time as well as the consequences. Keats imagines the world of the figures, picturing “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on -” (1467). In these lines, Keats uses imagination to grasp at the melodies that cannot escape the vase, thereby creating a fantasy of music that he is unable to hear. This reaffirms his theory posited in Letter, as Keats must imagine the beautiful song of the pipes, surmising that the pipes would truly be able to produce sound that would be pleasing to hear. Rather than opening with the truth that the pipes would make sounds, which ultimately would be an un-poetic observation, Keats opts to call the imagined unheard melodies into the poem. Ultimately, as with the allegory of Adam and Eve, this acts as creation of the highest caliber – giving language to that which is imagined, which therefore allows it to live on the page.
Keats’s verbalization of the imagined completes the poem in its last stanza and offers final coruscating remarks on the three elements exemplified in “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. After meditating on the immutability of the vase and the implications of never changing, Keats completes the poem with the lines:
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’; that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” (1468).
By ending the poem thusly, Keats bolsters the poetic elements of truth and beauty. Naming them outright, he provides a moment of knowledge from the vase to the viewer. In so doing, he creates an imagined scene, picturing the longevity of the vase far beyond his own mortality. Furthermore, he anticipates a friendship between mankind and art in which the vase might advise future appreciators of beauty. This use of the imagination which begins in his prediction of the death of his generation and the subsequency of further viewers then generates the parting aphorism on truth and beauty. Again, Keats reifies the cruciality of imagination which leads to beauty and truth in congruence with one another. This statement echoes and elaborates upon his claims in Letter, conclusively demonstrating his loyalty to his precepts of imagination, truth, and beauty.
Ultimately, both William Blake and John Keats talk about these elements in theory and devote themselves to these elements in their poetry. Both poets emphasize the role of imagination as the ultimate beginning for poetry, however, they each approach truth differently. For Blake, truth is intangible, and therefore best perceived as an image, as an imagined version of what is true. Truth can neither be understood nor believed, but can only be reached through the act of creating it. Blake both constructs this theory and proves it throughout The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, using each line as an opportunity to create new poetry and connect his theories. Keats differentiates from this belief by incorporating beauty as a hallmark of truth, presenting a complex structure in which imagination creates the other two elements and in which recognition of beauty leads to artistic creation. Truth is inseparable from beauty for Keats, best exemplified in his poem on art “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. Despite their theoretical differences concerning truth, both poets adhere to the Romantic belief that poetry must stem from a place of imagination and must contain elements of truth. Both truth and imagination play crucial roles in each poet’s work, and poems of William Blake and John Keats exemplify their respective poetic theories.