John Keats is a spell binding poet, who lived a short life of 25 years, but left behind a towering legacy in the Romantic period. His work “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” is an imaginative masterpiece written in 1819, which was near his death in 1821. During the time he wrote the ballad, his brother died of tuberculosis; an ailment that swept over many members of his family, including him. He also became devoted to young woman, Fanny Brawne, but struggled with his continuous meager ownerships. The time of darkness, disease, and depression were close reflected in the ballad, where love and death both reign as did in his personal life. The central idea in the writing was risking everything for a pleasure that can be intoxicating, and can aid in one’s own demise. A spontaneous obsession radiates from the ballad, leaving Keats readers under a mysterious trance. These romanticism ideas were a clear break from the pressing restraints of society in the nineteenth century.
The ballad is a darker postmortem on romance (Wolfson 275). It’s an enticing story on the arrival of knight who appears “haggard, and loitering” in an autumn setting. He shares his perplexing dream like story, where he meets a “faery child” in a mysterious meadow. The knight courts her and prances her around on his stead, obsessed by his new captivating pleasure. He finds that she speaks a strange tongue, but believes she speaks of loving him. With a few kisses and a lulling sleep, he dreams of pale kings with warning signs that she is a merciless beautiful woman. But it’s too late to heed to the warnings because he is now palely loitering on the cold hill side among loneliness.
Once you enter in the mystifying ballad of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” you are captivated b...
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...cy, is stated to be an allegory of Keats and Fanny (Keats and his love), or one of Keats and tuberculosis (Keats and death) (Almeida 97). I find it a mixture of both. The ballad carries the aspects of a setting of dark, unwanted death, but also that of a medieval love of beauty and enchantment.
Works Cited
Almeida, Hermione de. Critical Essays on John Keats. Boston, G.K. Hall & Co., 1990. 97-327.
John Keats, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” Poetic Works, 1884, Bartleby.com: Great Books Online, ed. Steven van Leeuwen, 2002, 5 May 2002 http://www.bartleby.com/126/55.htm.
Murry, John Middleton. Keats and Shakespeare; a Study of Keats’ Poetic Life from 1816-1820. London, Oxford University Press, 1925. 82.
Wolfson, Susan J. The Questioning Presence: Wordsworth, Keats, and the Interrogative Mode in Romantic Poetry. Ithics: Cornell University Press, 1986. 275-301.
... Works Cited Everett, Nicholas. From The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in English. Ed. Ian Hamilton.
The Breton lai, Milun is the ninth among twelve lais in the collected works known famously as the Lais of Marie de France. It is a narrative about a courtly love and family bond that become divided by an overpowering marital system. Written in England, the lai of the legendary medieval poet, Marie de France, can be traced back to the 12th century. Virtually nothing is known of the writer. Any information identified, including her name and geographical background, has been discovered through her manuscripts. While her poems focus primarily on the observance of love, distinctiveness of each character, and vibrancy of words, Marie’s lai, Milun, had a sense of realism involved that impacted me personally. The fictional tale corresponds to my life in a meaningful way that made me feel connected to the female character in the story. Marie’s style of writing provoked me to respond through my own life experiences and emotions of loving secretively, mothering a child, and the pain of separation.
Baron, forlorn in the loss of his Madeline. Does Keats merely make tribute to this classic idea of
Time is endlessly flowing by and its unwanted yet pending arrival of death is noted in the two poems “When I Have Fears,” by John Keats and “Mezzo Cammin,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Keats speaks with no energy; only an elegiac tone of euphoric sounds wondering if his life ends early with his never attained fame. He mentions never finding a “fair creature” (9) of his own, only experiencing unrequited love and feeling a deep loss of youth’s passion. Though melancholy, “Mezzo Cammin,” takes a more conversational tone as Longfellow faces what is commonly known as a midlife crisis. The two poems progressions contrast as Keats blames his sorrow for his lack of expression while Longfellow looks at life’s failures as passions never pursued. In spite of this contrast, both finish with similar references to death. The comparable rhyme and rhythm of both poems shows how both men safely followed a practiced path, never straying for any spontaneous chances. The ending tones evoking death ultimately reveal their indications towards it quickly advancing before accomplish...
John Keats’s illness caused him to write about his unfulfillment as a writer. In an analysis of Keats’s works, Cody Brotter states that Keats’s poems are “conscious of itself as the poem[s] of a poet.” The poems are written in the context of Keats tragically short and painful life. In his ...
Although these poems are both centered around the theme of love, they each contain a different meaning. Lord Byron's “She Walks in Beauty” is dedicated to conveying love through the use of metaphors. Keats' poem, “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” on the other hand, tells a story about how love can be deceiving. Despite their differences, these poems have similarities as well. They each have three parts that progress a story along through the use of literary techniques. Each poem was also written in the early 1800's. These poems both implicate the reader to make a connection to everyday life by relating possible experiences of love.
Keats’ poetry explores many issues and themes, accompanied by language and technique that clearly demonstrates the romantic era. His poems ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and ‘Bright Star’ examine themes such as mortality and idealism of love. Mortality were common themes that were presented in these poems as Keats’ has used his imagination in order to touch each of the five senses. He also explores the idea that the nightingale’s song allows Keats to travel in a world of beauty. Keats draws from mythology and christianity to further develop these ideas. Keats’ wrote ‘Ode To A Nightingale’ as an immortal bird’s song that enabled him to escape reality and live only to admire the beauty of nature around him. ‘Bright Star’ also discusses the immortal as Keats shows a sense of yearning to be like a star in it’s steadfast abilities. The visual representation reveal these ideas as each image reflects Keats’ obsession with nature and how through this mindset he was able
= === La Belle Dame Sans Merci is a ballad which means the language is simple, bare and direct. The poem starts off with a kind of narrator. for the first few paragraphs.
The femme fatales in both the poem and song are portrayed out of a similar tradition, but in actuality are quite different; in Keats poem, the woman is depicted as seductive and ruinous, while in Stewart’s song, the woman is characterized as more mysterious and compulsive. Keats’ femme fatale is seductive and ruinous because her actions of luring him into her enslavement turn out to be a catastrophe for the man. In this poem, the woman takes advantage of the “haggard” and “woe-begone” man (6). The woman is described as “Full beautiful – a fairy’s child” (14). Her appearance itself is enticing.
Imagery and symbolism merged to express his imagination, he became a unique poet in an evolving world where Romanticism was quickly expanding globally, not into a movement, but a way of thinking. Keats’ mother and brother, and eventually he too, passed away of tuberculosis. At the time of his brother 's passing, he developed ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’. ‘La Belle’ expressed Keats’ intellect and creativity, although at the same time he himself expressed his angst and depression for the loss of his brother. His poem ‘Bright Star’ was written in a part of his life in which a woman had influenced Keats’ greatly, so much in fact that he was driven to write ‘Bright Star’ in appreciation and celebration of the love of his life. These poems reflect Keats’ intellect, originality, creativity, and his ability to merge the contextual aspects of his life and his imagination with the ideals and concepts of Romanticism to create powerful
“la belle dame sans merci” was written April 21, 1819 by John Keats. A Romantic poet who despite his reputation as being one of the most beloved poets of all time, was not well received during his short lived life. In fact Keats reputation didn’t grow till after his death near the end of the nineteenth century. He is now considered one of the key figures in the second generation of the romantic movement. Keats major works did not focus on religion, ethnics, morals, or politics. He wrote mostly of sensational experiences about the richness of life. Though experiences may be pleasurable at first they don’t always have fairytale endings, sometimes the pleasures of life can become overwhelming, such is the theme of Keats ballad “La belle dame sans merci”.
Arguably one of John Keats’ most famous poems, “Ode to a nightingale” in and of itself is an allegory on the frail, conflicting aspects of life while also standing as a commentary on the want to escape life’s problems and the unavoidability of death. Keats’ poem utilizes a heavy amount of symbolism, simile and allusion to idealize nature as a perfect, almost mystical, world that holds no problems while using imagery taken from nature, combined with alliteration and assonance, to idealize the dream of escape from the problems life often presents; more specifically, aging and our inevitable deaths by allowing the reader to feel as if they are experiencing the speaker’s experience listening to the nightingale.
While Coleridge describes the process of creating Romantic poetry and encourages poets to use the combination of nature and imagination in this process, Keats is more focused on reality and is well aware of the limitations of the Grecian urn. With the poets’ admiration of nature present in both poems …… to be completed.
When talking about poetry and Romanticism, one of the most common names that come to mind is John Keats. Keats’ lifestyle was somewhat different from his contemporaries and did not fit the Romantic era framework, this is most likely the reason he stood out from the rest. Keats wrote many poems that are still relevant, amongst them Ode to a Nightingale, which was published for the very first time in July, 1819. The realistic depth and lyrical beauty that resonates in Ode to a Nightingale is astounding. Though, his career was rather short, Keats expressed a deep yearning to rise above misery and celebrate life via his consciousness and imagination. Themes of life and death play out in a number of his poems. This essay seeks to discuss Keats’s representation of mortality and immortality, specifically in his poem Ode to a Nightingale.
Keats, John. “Letters: To George and Thomas Keats.” The Norton Anthology: English Literature. Ninth Edition. Stephen Greenblatt, eds. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 967-968. Print.