Resurrecting rhymes, reasons and (no) rhotics
Reconstructing Keats’s pronunciation
This paper reconstructs the pronunciation of the English Romantic poet John Keats — and in particular the
likely original sound of one of his final poems, Bright Star — just over two hundred years after his death
(1821). Keats makes a particularly fascinating phonological study due to Lockhart’s
(1818) denunciation of him as a ‘Cockney poet’. I use evidence from contemporary pronouncing dictionaries and
several other treatises and orthoepical works from the early nineteenth century to narrow down likely pronunciation variants
in 1819. I then employ evidence from Keats’s own rhyme schemes (more concrete) and biographical details relating to his
location, education, and social and literary milieu (more speculative) to construct a likely rendition of Bright
Star in the poet’s own voice.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background on Keats
- 3.Bright Star
- 4.Pronouncing dictionaries
- 5.Cockney Keats
- 6.Diphthongs
- 7.Other features
- 8.Conclusions
- Author queries
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Acknowledgments
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Notes
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References
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