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Summary of symbolism of poetry by william butler yeats
Summary of symbolism of poetry by william butler yeats
La belle dame sans merci analysis
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La Belle Dame sans Merci, written by famous romantic poet John Keats in 1819, has been declared one of Keats’s greatest works due to the ambiguous boundaries it sets between imagination and reality [Kelly]. Throughout the poem, the reader always questions the “reality” presented by the poem, creating many facets that the readers have discussed for years and still have not established a definite answer as to their true meaning. La Belle Dame sans Merci embodies Keats’s “negative capability” perfectly. Keats believed that people of great intellectual prowess must retain the ability to accept that everything might not have a clear-cut value and that there is not always one true answer. This is the essence of negative capability, and the poem requires readers to utilize this mindset in order to possibly understand the mysticism the poem creates through the knight-in-arms’s tale.
La Belle Dame sans Merci consists of twelve quatrains, eight of them pertaining to the knight’s depiction of his short-lived love with a “faery’s child.” The first three stanzas belong to an unknown speaker addressing the knight. The first two stanzas are nearly the same, with their first line questioning the knight’s condition, their second line illustrating the condition of the knight, and their last two lines containing imagery illustrating a scene of winter. The third stanza depicts the knight further, showing his vitality decaying with “[his] cheeks a fading rose / fast withereth too.” The fact that there was a “rosy” quality to his cheeks but now is fading parallels with one leaving a warm house (the mead) and stepping into the winter’s cold (the hill.) This correlates with a latter portion of the poem when the knight claims that he fell asleep...
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... Belle Dame sans Merci apart from the rest of Keats’s work is not its theme, but its never-ending ambiguity. Regardless of how many times it is read or analyzed, the reader is never absolutely sure what happened to the knight [Hirst]. This characteristic is the key feature that truly makes the poem one of Keat’s greatest works.
Works Cited
Wolf Z. Hirst, "Dying into Life: The First Hyperion and 'The Eve of St. Agnes'," in John Keats, Twayne, 1981, pp. 92-118. Reprinted in Poetry for Students, Vol. 17. Literature Resource Center. Gale Group Databases.
David Kelly, Critical Essay on "La Belle Dame sans Merci," in Poetry for Students, Vol. 17, Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Gale Group Databases.
Lilia Melani. “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” Brooklyn College. 3/26/08 through 3/29/08.
Swenson, May. "Unconscious Came a Beauty." The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Ed. Jahan Ramazani et al. 3rd ed. 2 vols. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003. 2: 49.
Womanhood in The Eve of St. Agnes and La Belle Dame Sans Merci and Mariana by Keats
Baron, forlorn in the loss of his Madeline. Does Keats merely make tribute to this classic idea of
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.
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
Readers of Keats’ poetry have long spoken of the enchanting power of his language, and in one of his most famous works, “The Eve of St. Agnes”; the reader is positively enchanted by the protagonist, Madeline. She’s pure, virginal, positively otherworldly, and “seem’d a splendid angel, newly drest” (Keats 77). Madeline also displays trappings of religious symbols throughout the work. She is called a “Mission’d spirit and a “seraph fair” (Keats 72-3). The reader could scarcely read the poem without immediately associating Madeline with the most divine cherubs in Heaven. Her virginity is repeatedly mentioned and referenced; even her room, or the maiden’s chamber, is “silken, hush’d, and chaste” (Keats 76). Young Porphyro with “heart on fire” for Madeline simply couldn’t resist this angel (Keats 71). One might connect that, similarly, young John Keats could not resist his own angel, Fanny Brawne. At the time of the composition of “The Eve of St. Agnes” Keats was heavy in the thralls of his engagement to Fanny. In her book, John Keats: The Making of a Poet, Aileen Ward proclaims “The Eve of St. Agnes” to be "the first confident flush of [Keats's] love for Fanny Brawne" (Ward 310). However, if Madeline is meant to be a manifestation of Fanny Brawne, Keats must not think of his fiancé as merely an angel, but something more.
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.
In Bright Star, Keats utilises a mixture of the Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnet forms to vividly portray his thoughts on the conflict between his longing to be immortal like the steadfast star, and his longing to be together with his love. The contrast between the loneliness of forever and the intenseness of the temporary are presented in the rich natural imagery and sensuous descriptions of his true wishes with Fanny Brawne.
Ferguson, Margaret W., Salter, Mary J., and Stallworthy, Jon. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. fifth ed. N.p.: W.W. Norton, 2005. 2120-2121. 2 Print.
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John Keats’ belief in the beauty of potentiality is a main theme of him great “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” This idea appears in many of his other poems that precede this ode, such as “The Eve of St. Agnes,” but perhaps none of Keats’ other works devote such great effort to showcase this idea. The beauty of the Grecian Urn (likely multiple urns), and its strength as a symbol, is a masterful mechanism. Just about all facets of this poem focus on an unfulfilled outcome: but one that seems inevitably completed. Thus, while the result seems a foregone conclusion, Keats’ static world creates a litany of possible outcomes more beautiful than if any final resolution.
-Wasserman, Earl. "Chapter Two: Discussions of Particular Poems "The Ode to a Grecian Urn"." Twentieth Century Views Keats A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Walter Jackson Bate. New Jersey:
Keats presents a stark contrast between the real and the surreal by examining the power of dreams. For the narrators of each work, dream works as a gateway to the unconscious, or rather, a more surreal and natural state of mind. Keats presents the world as a place where one cannot escape from his/her troubles. For the narrator in “Ode to a Nightingale” he attempts to artificially medicate himself as a means of forgetting about the troubles of the real world which cause him to feel a “drowsy numbness” (Ode to a Nightingale 1) which “pains / My senses, as though of hemlock I had drunk,” (1-2). The narrator, seemingly in search for both inspiration and relief, drowns out these feelings through an overindulgence in wine as a way to “leave
Isomaki, Richard. "Interpretation and Value in 'Mont Blanc' and 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty." Studies in Romanticism. Volume 30 n1 (1991): 57-69.