%0 Journal Article
%T “Some ghostly Queen of Spades”: John Keats’s images of spectrality
%A Łuczyńska-Hołdys, Małgorzata
%J Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis
%V First View (2024)
%N Volume 19, Issue 2


%@ 1897-3035
%U https://ejournals.eu/czasopismo/studia-litteraria-uic/artykul/some-ghostly-queen-of-spades-john-keatss-images-of-spectrality
%X In the present paper I aim at exploring Keats’s use of Gothic and grotesque images in his three famous poems: “Isabella, or the Pot of Basil”, “The Eve of Saint Agnes” and the unfinished “The Eve of St. Mark”. I argue that there is a consistent pattern of imagery in Keats’s poetry that combines these two categories, and this imagery revolves around an idea of a spectral presence, or a “life-in-death” existence. The mingling of these two literary and aesthetic modes allows for a powerful articulation of anxieties relating to mortality, confrontation with the inevitability of death and decay of the human body, and the uneasy, tentative hope for the afterlife.