All Program Dates
November 2, 2026 | 6:00pm - 7:30pm ET
November 9, 2026 | 6:00pm - 7:30pm ET
November 16, 2026 | 6:00pm - 7:30pm ET
November 23, 2026 | 6:00pm - 7:30pm ET
November 30, 2026 | 6:00pm - 7:30pm ET
Registration
Tuition for this course is $300. Members receive exclusive discounts on our programs and courses. Not a member? Learn more.
Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation. If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email rsvp@rosenbach.org.
To promote access to onsite and virtual Rosenbach experiences, we offer scholarships for each Signature Program. To inquire, email Sunstein Senior Manager of Digital Initiatives Edward G. Pettit at epettit@rosenbach.org.
This program is for those 18 and older.
Registration opens for Delancey Society members on Thursday, August 27, for Rosenbach members on Thursday, September 3, and for the general public on Thursday, September 10.
Description
In 1819, at the age of 23, John Keats wrote a series of odes often hailed as among the best shorter poems in the English language. They are vividly sensual. His handling of diction, rhythm, and rhyme are so deft that his lines can be sprightly at one moment and lapidary in the next. Their tone is devotional but brashly unsentimental. They are playful but one senses that absolutely everything is at stake in them. With successive readings, they open to reveal deeper ironies and implications. In short, the odes are highly readable and highly re-readable, so this course will be fun for both first-timers and dedicated Keatsians alike.
Each session will include some relevant background, but our discussions will be guided by the interests of participants. Likely topics will include desire, the crushing weight of history, what we want from pleasure, the meaning of devotion in the absence of faith, art, loss, the uses of fantasy, and what it’s like to be a human being with a fragile, needy body.
Instructor
Sean Hughes is a Philly-based writer and editor who has taught at Bryn Mawr College and Rutgers University – New Brunswick, where he completed a PhD in English Literature in 2020. His literary interests include Romanticism and Modernism, the relationship between literature and philosophy, historicism, and poetics. His article “George Eliot, Typology, and the Moral Psychology of Historicism” was published in the Spring 2022 issue of English Literary History. For the Rosenbach, Sean has led courses on Middlemarch, the Sonnet in English, and Mrs. Dalloway.