The “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” Poem by John Keats

“La Belle Dame sans Merci” is a ballad written by the English poet John Keats in 1819. The work “La Belle Dame sans Merci” is called one of the English classic poems. Ballad is an example of John Keats’ preoccupation with the concept of death and love themes. The poem demonstrates a knight who is doomed by a fairy through singing and specific looks. As a result, the fairy became an inspiration for multiple artists who created images that further became a few of the early samples of the femme fatale iconography of the 19th century.

The ballad “La Belle Dame sans Merci” delivers the faith of a knight who one day met a mysterious fairy who lured him into a mysterious grotto and took his life. When reading, it is important to make guidelines not so much for direct identification of the conceptual side of the literary text, but for creating the most elusive emotional atmosphere of the work. John Keats’ ballad consists of twelve stanzas of four lines each in the ABCB rhyming scheme, which is a simple way of structuring. In the text, the author uses subtle artistic techniques and approaches. Several literary devices used are allusions to manna, reality and death, illusion against love, assonance in the form of repeated vowels, and alliteration in the repeated beginning of words with the letter “W”. Alliteration is the repetition of one or more consonants to make the text more musical and expressive. An allusion in literary criticism is a reference, an allusion to a well-known fact, plot, or phrase. With the help of allusions, the authors fill their works with new meanings, rethink mythology, history, literature, and philosophy, or enter into polemics with the past.

The “Madly Singing in the Mountains” poem by Po Chü’i tells that everyone has flaws. At the same time, shortcomings do not limit a person in his movement to knowledge, the study of the world, its features, and its characteristics. At the same time, the poem seems to have a hidden meaning. What is said in the format of the text is of direct importance not only for understanding the mechanisms of spectator perception but also for assessing the possibilities of art criticism. Perhaps the author felt insecure about his weaknesses and plans. In this regard, he compares himself with the majority, trying to show that this is a standard feeling. At the same time, the poem strove for appeasement, showing the author’s mood for calmness and mutual understanding with himself and the world.

Mental reflection is located deep inside the artistic images, manifesting itself through the allegory, context, and subtext of the work. The author manages to convey the inner structure and aura of the work not only in direct speech but also through the second plan, inaccessible to ordinary logical constructions. The main aspect of the form of constructing the flow of this work is that any possibilities are open to a person. All people are imperfect, but this only makes everyone special, and incomparable with others. In this regard, the author’s initial intended idea and its presentation are most likely correlated through the use of metaphorical statements. The reader feels and lives emotions and states as if being the hero of the poem.