John Keats

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As we move towards the end of our time here in Italy through the KIIS Study Aboard, I have begun to reflect on many things that we have learned in this very short month. The Bronfenbrenners model, specifically has really stuck out to me and helped me get a good grasp on my understanding of giftedness. On Monday, June 18th we visited the Keats-Shelly House, which is a memorial house and museum that has been opened to the public in honor of the two famous romantic poets, John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. This visit really gave me an opportunity to reflect on the model and apply it Keats’s life. While this house was in memory of both poets, we focused more on John Keats.

Keats was a romantic poet that begun his life in London, England on October, 31st 1795. He was born into the middle class to Thomas and Frances Keats. When John was eight, his father died from falling off of a horse. When he was fourteen years old, his mother passed away from Tuberculosis. This was a very common form of death in this time period, due to the fact that London was very crowded, it spread very easily, and they had no known cure. John had suddenly become an orphan and Thomas Hammond, a family friend and local doctor, took John under his wing.

From a very young age, John knew he had a passion for literature and poetry but he kept it a secret because people from the middle class were expected to become doctors. The only respected poets came from the higher class. John decided to pursue his doctoral education, despite his love for poetry. However, when he was 21 he realized that he had a passion for helping others and knew that while he knew all about medicine and how to help people in that way, that he would help people more through his words. He ended up moving in to a house with his friend which was split into two. On the other side of the house lived Brawne family. The most important to Keats was Fanny Brawne. Long story short, John and Fanny fell in love and she became his muse. He began to write a ton of poetry and eventually tried to publish it, but it became very negatively viewed due to his middle class status. We then learned that he left Fanny for a little while to pursue his dreams through another publisher in Rome. On his quest, he contracted Tuberculosis and he sought out medical attention. At first, the doctor thought that he needed bleeding to be cured, but then once he saw John again he told him he was dying from too much passion. The doctors remedy was for him to stop writing poetry, which was the only thing that he loved.

His friends decided that he may make it through another year, if he were to go to Italy where the winters were not as harsh. They raised the money and sent him to Italy, where he eventually passed away at the young age of 25. John Keats, took the doctors advice and never wrote any more poetry and sadly, he was never able to make it back to Fanny before he passed. It is hard for me not imagine all of the different ways Johns life could have turned out. The small amount of poems that he did write are so famous as it is, but think about the amount of poems that he could have written only if he were able to live longer.

Looking at the Bronfenbrenners Model, we can see that many things influenced his life. His Mesosystem is made up of his family, who died when he was young and made him an orphan. What if his parents, or even just one of his parents would have survived? He may have had a completely different upbringing. He may have never met his muse, Fanny, and his poems may have been about something else. Making him more or even less of a famous poet than he is today. I would consider his class or neighborhood back in the day, to be his Exosystem. If he were to be born into the higher class, he could have been subjected to better medicine for his Tuberculosis. He would have also been accepted right away as a poet and not have had to waste time to pursue being a doctor. This could also be considered apart of his Macrosystem because it was the way the culture thought about the classes at that time.

The one that sticks out to me the most is the part in the Macrosystem that involveds the time period in which he was born. If John would have been born just a couple of hundred years later, it would have been very likely to contract Tuberculosis and die at the age he did. The doctor would have never told him to stop writing because later in time, they would have known that it was not the reason he was ill. He would have continued to bless this life with more of his beautiful works of art and contribute to the poetry we know and love today.

It is so intriguing, but also frightening to me to think that so many things influence how someone ends up. One thing could be different and cause an individual to not be able to use their giftedness in the way its meant to be used. John Keats, is not the only person who has been affected in this way, but his life is a good example to see the ways in which the Bronfenbrenners Model works, in terms of gifted development.