Schleiermacher's hermeneutics in Some of Keats's Poems

Friedrich Schleiermacher was the first who introduced hermeneutics in two branches including comparison and association, the former is based on comparison of concepts, and words, and the later is physical objectification of concepts. In fact, it is association of ideas, a new method to get rid of the traditional concepts. Therefore the new method leads to the innovative interpretations and illustrations which are suspended to be revealed, hence it produces what Derrida called Difference, Privileging here the hermeneutics of suspicion, the function of differences or contrasts refers to what Derrida extrapolated as Differance or to differ. These innovative ways of looking at the world, pave the way for new perceptions which are not revealed promptly, instead, challenges and penetrates the readers to discover the new conception which further makes some lingering in the new perception. In this sense, the slowness of new perception can become the other manifestation of Derridaian term, Différance(defer). Considering such a postmodern prospective in mind, this study is to illustrate these manifestations in some of the poems by John Keats. The authors of this paper believe that the essence or the motifs in most of the artistic works of these two poets respond to a dualistic notion which is – or might be – an ongoing process in literary criticism. This study tries to compare hermeneutics and Différance in some of Keats’s poems and it shows the relation among speech act theory and hermeneutics and Différance in his poems.