Archetypes in John Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci: A Ballad"
During the Romantic Movement in literature, numerous writers fed off one another’s ideas; thus, creating various patterns which reoccur throughout literary works. According to “The Literature Network,” John Keats is “usually regarded as the archetype of the Romantic writer.” Therefore, Keats himself is thought to be the original model for the writer during the Romantic Era. In his poem, “La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad,” Keats uses various archetypes which provide added meaning and depth to this work of literature.
The archetype may be defined as “the original model from which something is developed or made; in literary criticism, those images, figures, character types, settings, and story patterns that…are universally shared by people across cultures” (Murfin and Ray 29). Analytical psychologist Carl Jung believes that archetypes are “embedded deep in humanity’s collective unconscious and involve ‘racial memories’ of situations, events, and relations that have been part of human experience from the beginning” (Murfin and Ray 29). Therefore, the archetype reoccurs over and over again in literary works from all time periods, such as seasonal connotations. For example, the season of spring is commonly associated with comedy, while summer is affiliated with romance.
Archetypal, or Jungian, criticism focuses on the various archetypes which occur in literature. It emerged in the 1930s and primarily “focuses on those patterns in a particular literary work that commonly recur in other literary works” (Murfin and Ray 28). Northrop Frye, author of The Anatomy of Criticism, “viewed the vast corpus of literary works as a ‘self-contained literar...
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...ot present within the poem, readers would not automatically associate the characters and images with a prior memory; thus, readers would not be able to become aware of the circumstances and nature of the characters quite as easily. Therefore, the archetypal characters and images in Keats’ “La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad” provide important insights into the depth and meaning of the characters and occurrences within the poem itself.
Works Cited
“John Keats.” The Literature Network. 21 Feb. 2006 .
Keats, John. “La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature Seventh Edition, Volume 2. Ed. M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2000. 845-846.
Murfin, Ross & Ray, Supryia M. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms: Second Edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.
Le Morte d’Arthur and many other stories have many wonderful archetypes in them. The definition of an archetype is a typical character action or situation that seems to represent universal patterns of human nature. This means that things represent things that naturally happen and will still happen. Archetypes play into Le Morte d'Arthur by showing how the character act and react with other characters and objects. In Thomas Malory´s Le Morte d´Arthur he illustrates the three types of archetypes they include character, situational, and symbolic.
Barton, Edwin J. and Glenda A. Hudson. A Contemporary Guide to Literary Terms. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
Overall I think that the poems cannot help but be similar in some areas as they are both based around the concept of loving and loosing. However I think that they are very different to one another due to the way the author’s have written them. I personally prefer La Belle Dame Sans Merci as I think it is a more interesting poem and leaves the reader with a better impression. Once reading Keats’s poem I felt curious towards the character’s reasons for his actions, and stirred by the ending. I felt it raised more interesting questions than When We Two Parted.
The Virgin and the Whore: An Analysis of Keats’s Madeline in “The Eve of Saint Agnes”
The archetypal literary criticism centers itself around archetypes. Archetypes represent the first model of something. Writer and literary expert Elémire Zolla explains archetypes appear as patterns and exist in an intangible fashion. Another interpretation describes them as patterns of “instinctual behavior” (LaLlave and Gutheil). In literary terms, they appear in the form of characters, traditions, events, stories, or images existent in other works. Regardless of different cultures or time periods, archetypes remain present in literature.
Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7th ed. New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999.
Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7th ed. New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999.
In literature, Archetypal Criticism is a critical approach where the reader interprets the meaning of a story by looking at the archetypal characters, events, and symbols that it contains. In general, an archetype is a universal, primordial representation of an event or character that is seen as a general blueprint for stories and myths, such as the Hero or Death and Rebirth (Meyer 1587). Archetypes can be very important in identifying and supporting a theme by giving us background and references for aspects throughout the story. Carol Joyce Oates uses a couple vital archetypes in her short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” a tale about Connie, a teenage girl, who goes through an innocence to experience situation, signifying a transition from childhood to adulthood.
Wheeler, Kip. "Literary Terms and Definitions M." Literary Terms and Definitions "M" Carson-Newman University, n.d. Web. 12 May 2014.
Archetypes have been around for thousands of years, dating back to at least Plato discussing his “Theory of Forms”. In a literary contexts we think of archetypes such as the hero, the mentor, the journey, or the initiation. When looked at from these perspectives it appears that there is nothing original to write about, but these archetypes are used over and over with much success. The reason is because the writer and the reader empathize with the archetypes. Take for example the Initiation archetype, also called the Coming of Age story, in it is the struggle of the young against the old in an attempt to obtain individuality, and freedom that reflects what Jungian psychologists call, a “father complex”, a type of subset to the oedipus complex, in the authors.
Baldick, Chris. The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of Literary Terms , New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Womanhood in The Eve of St. Agnes and La Belle Dame Sans Merci and Mariana by Keats
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th Ed. Harcourt Brace College Publishers, Fort Worth, 1993.
Keats, John. “The Eve of St. Agnes”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic
The first theory to be discussed is structuralism, this theory is composed of many different branches. The branches that this paper will be looking into is archetypes. The definition of of archetype is typical images, characters, narrative designs and themes and other literary phenomena. Archetypes have their own form of criticism that is called archetypal criticism. Archetypal criticism means the generic, recurring and conventional elements in literature that cannot be explained through historical influence or tradition.