Was John Keats a cockney?

Question

Anybody know if John Keats was a cockney or had a cockney accent?

Answer 1

Interesting question, for the term "cockney" has a very different meaning now than it did originally, and it was probably in a state of transition at the time of Keats' birth.

Originally, it referred to all Londoners and was roughly synonymous with "city slicker." Note this explanation of the origin of the word, disputed but most likely accurate:

"A more plausible derivation of the word can be found in Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary: London was referred to by the Normans as the 'Land of Sugar Cake' (Old French: pais de cocaigne), an imaginary land of idleness and luxury. A humorous appellation, the word 'Cocaigne' referred to all of London and its suburbs, and over time had a number of spellings: Cocagne, Cockayne, and in Middle English, Cocknay and Cockney. The latter two spellings could be used to refer to both pampered children, and residents of London, and to pamper or spoil a child was 'to cocker' him. (See, for example, John Locke, '...that most children's constitutions are either spoiled or at least harmed, by cockering and tenderness.' from Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 1693)"

During the 18th century, workers on the dock moved into a section of London called Chatham, bringing with them a distinctive dialect; hence, the term came to be associated with the working class in certain sections of London, speaking a specific Cockney dialect.

Keats does not strictly fit in that narrower definition, though he was born on the border of the working class. However, the term "Cockney school" of poetry was first applied around 1816 to a group of young poets, specifically those centered around Leigh Hunt. Probably this term was roughly synonymous with "Bohemian" in a later era. It may have had connotations of both "lower-class" and "childish" or "soft."

It may have even been a term used on the streets and in the pubs to glorify young "rebel" poets. These poets, like Wordsworth and the Lake Poets before them, were throwing off the formal, French influence dominant in British poetry and holding forth for a return to the natural and the original or imaginative in poetry. Their poetry was characterized by more sensual language, freer forms, natural imagery,and appeals to the emotions--not the rigid forms, decorous language, and abstract ideas of the dominant neo-classicism. They were, therefore, assailed in conservative reviews like Blackwoods as "cockney" or lower-class poets, self-indulgent, not worthy of praise but of contempt.

It should be noted, of course, that these early reviews did not have access to Keats' great poems (the odes, "St. Agnes Eve," "La belle dame," Lamia, the Hyperion poems, etc.) but were limited to his first published lyrics and the long, lush Endymion. Further, it should be noted that these reviewers were the pedants of their day, resisting any significant departure from conventional verse.

Byron and Shelley, of course, were incensed by these bitter, negative reviews and even subscribed to a conviction that Keats' death has brought about by his disappointment. That's nonsense too. He died of tuberculosis, but had once been a cocky young fighter and would have stood up defiantly against these prissy critics.

He died at the age of 26, but his later poems place him clearly among the geniuses of the English-speaking literary world. His own critical ideas, about the nature and quality of poetry had not yet been developed in print and survive only in fascinating letters to friends and his brother. His concept of "negative capability," or poetic open-mindedness, is perhaps the defining notion of his generation of Romanticism.

So to answer your question directly,

(1) Keats was a cockney in the sense of a Londoner, not from the upper or highly educated classes.

(2) Keats' background and dialect were not exactly comparable to what we think of now as cockney. He was reasonably well-educated, very well-read, reasonably well off, and never a member of the working class. Apprenticed as a "working-class" surgeon, he was never a day laborer, but neither was he a university-educated professional or a member of the intellectual elite.

(3) However, he definitely was one of the "Cockney school," derided by the critical reviewers of his day but seen by his peers as one of the brightest young poets among those we now call the "Romantics."

But 'owever you describe 'im, 'e was one 'ell of a poet!

Answer 2

I preferred Robert Browning the nice for the poem the Pied Piper. It used to be considered one of my favorites as a baby. Alfred Tennyson grew to be a favourite later one. I by no means quite bought into both Keats or Shelley.

Answer 3

Keats was born in Finsbury Pavement in London, where his father, Thomas Keats, was a hostler.
I suppose he was