The poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" by John Keats is a ballad that expresses all of Keats' philosophies of happiness and the ideal world while, at the same time, being an enchanting love story on a simpler level. The poem contains his "pleasure thermometer" which leads to Keats' idea of happiness. The poem also contains Keats' vision of an ideal world where nothing ends or dies.
The poem begins with a narrator questioning a Knight at arms. The Knight is seen wandering around lifelessly and listlessly. Not only is he lifeless, but, around him, the whole forest is dying as well. "The sedge has withered from the Lake/ And no birds sing!" (Keats, p506 lines 3-4) The Knight is feverish, a word Keats uses to depict starvation and intense longing. The color on the Knight's cheeks is fading like the flora.
The Knight begins his narrative of his encounter with La Belle Dame. He describes her as a beautiful fairy with wild eyes. The inclusion of fairies and elves is important in Keats' poems. It helps depict the ideal world that Keats wrote and dreamed about.
Keats had a fear of endings. He wanted every pleasant sensation and every love affair to go on forever with the same intensity. There are two aspects of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" that expresses Keats' wish to immortalize fleeting happiness. One is the existence of fairies and elfin magic in the poem. The "Lady in the Meads," (Keats p507 line 13) is "a faery's child."(Keats p507 line 14) She sings "A faery's song" (line 24) and takes the Knight at arms to her "elfin grot." (line 29) In mythology fairies are immortal and eternally youthful and beautiful. They live in a realm known as Faerie, which is always summer and forever twilight. This magical land would appeal to Keats...
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...epresents the ideal world, he saw life in the world. Now that he came in contact with Immortality, he cannot see any life in the world around him. He is lifeless ("palely loitering"), the forest is lifeless ("the sedge is withered"), and there is no music in the woods ("and no birds sing"). (Keats lines 46-48)
La Belle Dame represents the ideal that is impossible. She is everything that mortals should strive for, yet can never attain. Once a mortal has knowledge of her, of the ideal, he will never be the same again. He will never be satisfied with the world that he is stuck in; the world that he cannot forsake for the ideal.
Works Cited
Kauvar, Gerald B. The Other Poetry of Keats. Associated University Presses: New
Jersey, 1969.
The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Shorter 4th Edition. Ed. Ferguson, Margaret. W. W.
Norton & Company: New York, 1997.
The storyline of both poems is based around love, and so they are similar in that respect, however I think the poems bring out different types of emotions. When We Two Parted is melancholy throughout, and is a lament for a lost love. This is different to La Belle Dame Sans Merci, as it is more enchanting and more to do with desire than love. It becomes exotic and bewitching, with the mood of the poem continuously changing. John Keats starts his poem, hoping that the reader will feel sympathetic for the character, and curious to what is wrong with this knight. However, it lifts to a fairytale mood, where the character is filled with lust towards this mysterious woman. It becomes exciting, and Keats creates the exotic mood with words such as “wild” which are contrary to the harmonious appearance that this woman has. He makes this fairy-like charming impression by describing her as “light” and “sweet”. It then moves to a threatening, victimized ambiance where by the woman has enchanted him into a spell, and he is trapped. Here Keats uses words such as “pale”, “death”, “cold” and “horrid” to show how the knight has become the victim of this unpleasant experience. It then ends with the silent mood it started off with, as if the knight is going in an unending circle. This clever ending was designed to surprise the reader, and leave them with a sense of mystery. In When We Two Parted, the reader does not share the experience with the character as they do in La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and so doesn’t go through the emotions that the reader is feeling. Lord Byron wrote the poem as if looking back on the experience and the entire poem has been written so that the reader understands the characters feelings, and is sympathetic towards him. Lord Byron creates this sorrowful atmosphere using words cold words such as “chill” and descriptions such as “pale grew thy cheek”. As is there is no warmth or affection left in the relationship. Byron uses “a knell” to emphasize the pain in this man’s heart. A knell is a bell that is rang for someone wh...
The conflicting theme demonstrated throughout Wuthering Heights is remarkably similar to the theme implicit in “La Belle Dame sans Merci”. This conflict is in the form of appearances, Illusion vs. Reality and man vs. nature and is personified through the characters, as well as the similarity of Gothic surroundings in both texts. In Wuthering Heights this parallel is shown through Heathcliff, who is vulnerable after falling head over heel for Catherine. Similarly in “La Belle Dame sans Merci” the Knight is in exactly the same position, as Heathcliff, as he’s entranced by the beauty that is La Belle.
Different Attitudes To Love In La Belle Dame Sans Merci And I Wanna Be Yours
related to the death of the dead. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The last paragraph is a near enough repeat of the first, with the last paragraph. knight describing him on the hill by the lake, as this is where he woke up after his dream. This means the poem has completed a full circle, as does the knight.
Marie de France wrote several short poems, called lais. Many of these such as Equitan, Bisclavret, and Le Fresne focus on love that causes trouble for the characters. In Equitan, the main character falls in love with an Elven queen, a relationship about which he can tell nobody. Bisclavret falls prey to an unworthy wife and his beastly form. Le Fresne’s affair suffers due to her mother’s slanderous words and a lover who is ruled by his men. Marie de France uses both direct and indirect foreshadowing in these lais to imply that misfortune will fall upon the characters and each use works to keep readers intrigued in the story.
Baron, forlorn in the loss of his Madeline. Does Keats merely make tribute to this classic idea of
Similarities and Differences between Macbeth and La Belle Dame Sans Merci In many different novels, evil is represented through a person. From the malicious deeds of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, to the manipulative nature of Fahrenheit 451’s Captain Beatty, evil commonly lies in a person’s soul. The most wicked of these characters include Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare’s drama, Macbeth and Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” from his ballad bearing the same name. At first glance, both texts seems to have little to no similarities and numerous differences, however, a closer look shows that Shakespeare and Keats use similar techniques and strategies to prove the theme and create motifs.
In The Lais of Marie de France, the theme of love is conceivably of the utmost importance. Particularly in the story of Guigemar, the love between a knight and a queen brings them seemingly true happiness. The lovers commit to each other an endless devotion and timeless affection. They are tested by distance and are in turn utterly depressed set apart from their better halves. Prior to their coupling the knight established a belief to never have interest in romantic love while the queen was set in a marriage that left her trapped and unhappy. Guigemar is cursed to have a wound only cured by a woman’s love; he is then sent by an apparent fate to the queen of a city across the shores. The attraction between them sparks quickly and is purely based on desire, but desire within romantic love is the selfishness of it. True love rests on a foundation that is above mere desire for another person. In truth, the selfishness of desire is the
Keats presents his feelings on how he no longer wishes for impossible goals, and how it is much more preferable to enjoy life as much as possible. It is of no use longing for things we cannot have, and so we must learn to live with the myriad of things we already have, of these one in particular appeals to Keats: the warmth of human companionship and the passion of love.
Wollstonecraft’s view of men is grounded on the belief that the sex sought to demoralize and dominate its feminine counterpart, specifically to “sink us [women] lower, merely to render us [women] alluring objects . . .” (1507). This comprises the majority of the plot in “La Belle,” as the knight recounts his time with the fairy, describing his attraction and desire which quickly consummate. The knight, after being smitten by the titular character’s looks, performs the effeminate task of “making a garland for her head / And bracelets too, and fragrant zone (Keats 1896). Alysha Allen proposes that this act is guided by the male to diminish any apprehension of the belle, thereby allowing him to follow through on his desire for sex (1131).
Keats uses a number of different language techniques to make the poem effective. The first is dividing the poem into two parts through the use of 2 speakers. We do not know who the first speaker is, probably someone who is passing through the area. In stanza 1 and 2 the poet makes use of repetition as he questions the knight about his condition “Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight?” line 1 stanza 1 and 2. He asks him why he is “so haggard, and so wo...
For example, in the first line is him contemplating his fear that he may never live to share all of his knowledge. It is a strange fact that we, as humans, believe that we will not die; we think this until there is that one point in life that we first see death. For many, a sense of mortality does not hit until a loved one’s light suddenly goes out and all that is left is a stream of hazy memories of that person. Keats knew his flame was flickering, so he wrote down his feelings and thoughts with vigor. When people of his time read what he put down on paper, they were not ready to accept the inevitable because they only saw a man belligerent about his life. Is has been said that, “the generally conservative reviewers of the day attacked his work, with malicious zeal, as mawkish and bad-mannered, as the work of an upstart." (The Poetry Foundation) After his death at such a young age, people began to see why he was contemplating such a dark concept. Basically, Keats gives the example that although the words of today can sometimes be ignored, there may be a time in the future when those words mean the world to
As known in our course that social determinants highly interfere in one’s poetry. Keats’s Bella Dame, is opted to as it fully represents what Jerome said above. It is, in my opinion, one of the best examples embodying such a significant role of external situation that considerably affects the way the
...storal” (45, p.1848). The urn’s eternity only exists artistically and does not reflect human life because only the urn “shou remain” forever (47, p.1848). Keats contrasts the ephemeral nature of human life with the longevity of the urn. In last two lines, Keats declares, “beauty is truth, truth beauty” (29, p.1848) embodying both sides of his perspective. By establishing a relationship between beauty and truth, Keats acknowledges that like truth, the beauty of the Grecian urn is unchangeable and that the ability accept reality is beautiful.
The poem is in essence, an ode to love itself; Keats is completely enamored with a goddess of love but Keats does not want Psyche as his lover, he merely wants her to enter his being and empower him with love. This turns every praise of Psyche into a praise of love itself. Keats wants to “let warm love into his mind.