Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
THE JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND HISTORY-GEOGRAPHY OF ANKARA UNIVERSITY, cilt.62, sa.1, ss.86-114, 2022 (Hakemli Dergi)
This paper attempts to discuss how the Kristevan melancholy permeates John Keats’s poetic romance Endymion. The melancholic Endymion withdraws from the symbolic and retreats into the realm of the unnameable Thing where self and other are undifferentiated. Endymion revolves around a melancholic hero. Endymion is a melancholic character who is immersed in a symbiosis with the maternal Thing; as a result, he retreats into the asymbolic realm from the symbolic domain of linguistic signifiers. This discussion of melancholy in Endymion coheres around “the old womb of night” (Keats 1818/1986, IV. 372) which points to the desire to relapse into the primordial Thing of the maternal realm. This desire for the uterine night is also reflected in Endymion’s urge to withdraw into the maternal “Cave of Quietude” (IV. 548) where the speechless infant merges with the maternal Thing. Further, the yearning for the nocturnal womb and the maternal cave is also seen in the image of Endymion who is “cooped up in the [pre-linguistic] den / Of helpless discontent” (I. 928-9). This Keatsian realm is characterised by “unseen light in darkness” (III. 986) which resonates with the Kristevan black sun of melancholy. In this uterine night, Endymion also appears as a Kristevan Narcissus, a melancholy being without an external object. This nocturnal womb provides Narcissan Endymion with a psychic interiority where a specular Narcissus/Endymion turns into a speculating one; the contemplative melancholic is endowed with a space for reflection.