...Descending into Despair with “La Belle Dame sans Merci” In his poem, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” John Keats has emphasized the literary elements of structure, speaker, and imagery to create a story reminiscent of courtly love from the medieval era where the knight errant suffers for the love of the beautiful, mysterious and unattainable mistress. In the early nineteenth century, an interest in the ballad of earlier centuries was sparked by the romantic poets of the time, of which John Keats was one, and his poem, “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” became a true example of what became known as a literary ballad. Similar to the popular folk ballad that was sung, a literary ballad sticks to the basics of repeated lines and stanzas “in a refrain, swift action with occasional surprise endings, extraordinary events evoked in direct, simple language, and scant characterization.” (pg. 508) Literary ballads also tend to be more polished in regards to their style and their use of poetic techniques. In addition, they will exhibit a set rhyme scheme and a simple structure of stanzas that allows the poem to flow as if it were that song of years past. Keats’s poem consists of twelve stanzas of four lines, known as quatrains, each with a rhyme scheme of abcb. The poet has also taken care to write each line to a specific length. The first three lines of each stanza consist of eight syllables each, but the final line of the stanza is either four or five syllables long. Since a literary ballad’s...
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...John Keats – La Belle Dame Sans Merci La Belle Dame sans Merci, one of John Keats last works, is a ballad which tells the story of a knight who fell in love with a mystical creature, and now suffers the aftermath of a broken heart. The poem starts with the writer describing a solitary knight who is walking around lonely. So already from the poems start the reader gets sympathy for the knight. In the two first verse, the scene of autumn is described: The grass stopped, no birds sing, squirrels and other animals have hoarded food to sustain them throughout winter, and the harvest is done. The writer makes the knight look so exhausted and miserable, by saying: So haggard and woebegone. By saying this, it makes the knight seem to be in a terrible condition: “And on the thy cheek a fading rose – the poet is comparing the color on his cheeks with a fast fading rose. The poet also says: I see a lily on thy brow – which means that the knight-at-arms forehead glistens with sweet like a lily (white). In the fourth stanza the knight starts to tell his tale: He had met a beautiful maiden in the meadows. She was the most beautiful thing he had cast eyes upon, with long flowing hair and wild eyes, which led him to believe that she must be a fairy’s child. Her eyes however had struck him as wild and doleful. He had only eyes for her and did not notice anything else. She was receptive of his attentions and sang to him sweetly. He tried to win her by making garlands and bracelets out of...
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...How does Keats present love in his poems? John Keats was born 1795, in London and was often claimed as one of the most important Romantic figures of the nineteenth century. He had many struggles in his life from his mother and brother dying from tuberculosis, to his poetry being constantly rejected and him running out of money. A lot of Keats’s themes were Romantic, such as the beauty of nature, the contrast of fantasy and reality and the relation of beauty to suffering. Though initially all Keats’s poems that present love seems to be portrayed contrastingly, really they’re actually revealed to be quite similar. Through numerous techniques, from the exploration of senses, to form to the different symbols and styles that Keats’s used to intertwining themes used to express the theme of love. However through all of Keats’s poems, he shares a sense of sacrifice and pain that deal with his idea of the eternal and fantasy world and how in exchange for immortality the lovers have to give up their human experiences and intimacy. In the ninth line of ‘Bright Star’ Keats reveals his desire to remain in the moment “Pillow’d upon [his] fair love’s ripening breast”. However in order to remain in this moment Keats has to sacrifice all his humans’ experiences to be immortal. In the final line of ‘Bright Star’ Keats writes “And so live ever—or else swoon to death”. Many have considered ‘Swoon’ to be an little death or an orgasm as towards the end of the poem the pace and rhythm increases...
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...Dana O'Brady Professor Jennings Emergence of the Modern 11/8/12 John Keats, Charles Baudelaire and Beauty John Keats and Charles Baudelaire are two great poets who gives some sort of description of what beauty is and what it can do. In Keats' La belle dame sans merci, the reader is told a story of a knight who is attracted to a woman's beauty, but later he ends up alone and "palely loitering". In Baudelaire's Hymn to Beauty, the reader gets a sense of how beauty can be overwhelming, enticing, yet at times dangerous. In both poems beauty is in the form of a woman and the woman's appearance is very captivating. Baudelaire's poem is questioning the origin of Beauty while describing her. He says, "Your gaze bestows both kindnesses and crimes/ So it is said you act on us like wine/ Your eye contains the evening and the dawn..." Baudelaire is attracted to her eyes, and the way she looks at him. Her eyes look kind yet villainous, like the contrast between night and day, good and bad. For all he knows she could be a "maneater", a woman who destroys men by any means necessary. The woman's beauty acts on him "like wine", it could either be bitter sweet or strong and uncontrollable. It seems as though hes heard of her kind, but he still wonders if shes "from the sky or the abyss." He goes on to say, "You pour out odours like an evening storm; / Your kiss is potion from an ancient jar,/ That can make heroes cold and children warm...
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...Examine Byron’s response to at least two of the places visited by Childe Harold: Greece, Rome, Portugal, Venice & co. ‘I have always had great contempt for women; and formed this opinion of them not hastily, but from my own fatal experience. My writings, indeed tend to exalt the sex; and my imagination has always delighted in giving them a beau ideal likeness, but I only drew them as a painter or sanctuary would do, -- as they should be.’[1] (Medwin, Nov 1821- Mar 1822 (Cf. Ideality of Art)) p. 195 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was Lord George Gordon Byron’s first composition which he begun in 1809 and finally completed in 1818. The structure of the poem follows a young promising knight through his journey around Europe. The poem is autobiographical: Byron uses Childe Harold as a fictional figure to respond to, and comment on, life and experiences around Europe whilst Byron was undertaking his own ‘Tour’. The Grand Tour ‘became the fashionable way for young male aristocrats to complete an education whose foundation was classical Greek and Roman history, rhetoric, philosophy, and poetry.’[2] As a Romantic poet, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Byron uses the depiction of nature as a way to express his opinions of place. Childe Harold is full of images and motifs which takes its reader on a journey, or a pilgrimage, of self-discovery and through foreign lands in the truly beautiful Byronic style. Politics have dominated the critical analysis of Childe Harold in the past,...
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...John Keats John Keats (/ˈkiːts/ 31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his work having been in publication for only four years before his death.[1] Although his poems were not generally well received by critics during his lifetime, his reputation grew after his death, and by the end of the 19th century, he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of poets and writers. Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keats was the most significant literary experience of his life.[2] The poetry of Keats is characterised by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. This is typical of romantic poets, as they aimed to accentuate extreme emotion through the emphasis of natural imagery. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analysed in English literature. 1 1.1 Biography Life mask of Keats by Benjamin Haydon, 1816 Early life John Clarke’s school in Enfield, close to his grandparents’ house. The small school had a liberal outlook and a progressive curriculum more modern than the larger, more prestigious schools.[11] In the family atmosphere at Clarke’s, Keats developed an interest in classics and history, which would stay with him throughout his short life. The headmaster’s son, Charles Cowden Clarke, also became an important...
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...‘’Where is the Pastoral Tradition in Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale?’’ Two hundred years after the Renaissance period in England, critics became concerned in the reasoning behind John Keats’s poetry. They searched many of the origins of the poet’s references to his works and this gave assistance into asserting that he was a poet in search of the ideal to escape from the real world of ‘’fever and fret’’. (Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale: stanza 3) This is due to the experience of cruel disappointments in his personal life. Ode to a Nightingale is a fine example of the cruel disappointments that Keats faced in life for he wrote the Ode soon after the death of his brother Tom who was suffering from tuberculosis. In one of Keats’s personal letters (Gittings 1970: letter 263) Keats claimed that he and his brothers could never count on any happiness lasting – that they were continually confronting death in the family. Keats shows this pain in stanza 3 of the poem: ‘’Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin, and dies;’’ (Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale: stanza 3) However, Ode to a Nightingale also portrays Keats’s escape from the cold realities of life. It is through this ‘escape’ that I am going to shape this essay into the pastoral tradition. My main focus shall be how the Ode offers a resemblance to a poem of pastoral retirement but has a pastoral elegy concealed within it. The...
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...B.A. (HONOURS) ENGLISH (Three Year Full Time Programme) COURSE CONTENTS (Effective from the Academic Year 2011-2012 onwards) DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF DELHI DELHI - 110007 0 Course: B.A. (Hons.) English Semester I Paper 1: English Literature 4(i) Paper 2: Twentieth Century Indian Writing(i) Paper 3: Concurrent – Qualifying Language Paper 4: English Literature 4(ii) Semester II Paper 5: Twentieth Century Indian Writing(ii) Paper 6: English Literature 1(i) Paper 7: Concurrent – Credit Language Paper 8: English Literature 1(ii) Semester III Paper 9: English Literature 2(i) Paper 10: Option A: Nineteenth Century European Realism(i) Option B: Classical Literature (i) Option C: Forms of Popular Fiction (i) Paper 11: Concurrent – Interdisciplinary Semester IV Semester V Paper 12: English Literature 2(ii) Paper 13: English Literature 3(i) Paper 14: Option A: Nineteenth Century European Realism(ii) Option B: Classical Literature (ii) Option C: Forms of Popular Fiction (ii) Paper 15: Concurrent – Discipline Centered I Paper 16: English Literature 3(ii) Paper 17: English Literature 5(i) Paper 18: Contemporary Literature(i) Paper 19: Option A: Anglo-American Writing from 1930(i) Option B: Literary Theory (i) Option C: Women’s Writing of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (i) Option D: Modern European Drama (i) Paper 20: English Literature 5(ii) Semester VI Paper 21: Contemporary Literature(ii) Paper 22: Option A: Anglo-American Writing from 1930(ii) Option B:...
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...Министерство образования и науки Республики Казахстан Кокшетауский государственный университет им. Ш. Уалиханова An Outline of British Literature (from tradition to post modernism) Кокшетау 2011 УДК 802.0 – 5:20 ББК 81:432.1-923 № 39 Рекомендовано к печати кафедрой английского языка и МП КГУ им. Ш. Уалиханова, Ученым Советом филологического факультета КГУ им. Ш. Уалиханова, УМС КГУ им. Ш. Уалиханова. Рецензенты: Баяндина С.Ж. доктор филологических наук, профессор, декан филологического факультета КГУ им. Ш. Уалиханова Батаева Ф.А. кандидат филологических наук, доцент кафедры «Переводческое дело» Кокшетауского университета им. А. Мырзахметова Кожанова К.Т. преподаватель английского языка кафедры гуманитарного цикла ИПК и ПРО Акмолинской области An Outline of British Literature from tradition to post modernism (on specialties 050119 – “Foreign Language: Two Foreign Languages”, 050205 – “Foreign Philology” and 050207 – “Translation”): Учебное пособие / Сост. Немченко Н.Ф. – Кокшетау: Типография КГУ им. Ш. Уалиханова, 2010 – 170 с. ISBN 9965-19-350-9 Пособие представляет собой краткие очерки, характеризующие английскую литературу Великобритании, ее основные направления и тенденции. Все известные направления в литературе иллюстрированы примерами жизни и творчества авторов, вошедших в мировую литературу благодаря...
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...BS (4 Years) for Affiliated Colleges Course Contents for Subjects with Code: ENG This document only contains details of courses having code ENG. Center for Undergraduate Studies, University of the Punjab 1 BS (4 Years) for Affiliated Colleges Code ENG‐101 Year 1 Subject Title Introduction to Literature‐I (History of English Literature‐I) Discipline English Cr. Hrs 3 Semester I Aims: One of the objectives of this course is to inform the readers about the influence of historical and socio-cultural events upon the production of literature. Although the scope of the course is quite expansive, the readers shall focus on early 14th to 19th century Romantic Movement. Histories of literature written by some British literary historians will be consulted to form some socio-cultural and political cross connections. In its broader spectrum, the course covers a reference to the multiple factors from economic theories to religious, philosophical and metaphysical debates that overlap in these literary works of diverse nature and time periods under multiple contexts. The reading of literature in this way i.e. within the sociocultural context will help the readers become aware of the fact that literary works are basically a referential product of the practice that goes back to continuous interdisciplinary interaction. Contents: • Medieval Period • Renaissance and Reformation • Elizabethan Period • Milton, the Metaphysical...
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...62118 0/nm 1/n1 2/nm 3/nm 4/nm 5/nm 6/nm 7/nm 8/nm 9/nm 1990s 0th/pt 1st/p 1th/tc 2nd/p 2th/tc 3rd/p 3th/tc 4th/pt 5th/pt 6th/pt 7th/pt 8th/pt 9th/pt 0s/pt a A AA AAA Aachen/M aardvark/SM Aaren/M Aarhus/M Aarika/M Aaron/M AB aback abacus/SM abaft Abagael/M Abagail/M abalone/SM abandoner/M abandon/LGDRS abandonment/SM abase/LGDSR abasement/S abaser/M abashed/UY abashment/MS abash/SDLG abate/DSRLG abated/U abatement/MS abater/M abattoir/SM Abba/M Abbe/M abbé/S abbess/SM Abbey/M abbey/MS Abbie/M Abbi/M Abbot/M abbot/MS Abbott/M abbr abbrev abbreviated/UA abbreviates/A abbreviate/XDSNG abbreviating/A abbreviation/M Abbye/M Abby/M ABC/M Abdel/M abdicate/NGDSX abdication/M abdomen/SM abdominal/YS abduct/DGS abduction/SM abductor/SM Abdul/M ab/DY abeam Abelard/M Abel/M Abelson/M Abe/M Aberdeen/M Abernathy/M aberrant/YS aberrational aberration/SM abet/S abetted abetting abettor/SM Abeu/M abeyance/MS abeyant Abey/M abhorred abhorrence/MS abhorrent/Y abhorrer/M abhorring abhor/S abidance/MS abide/JGSR abider/M abiding/Y Abidjan/M Abie/M Abigael/M Abigail/M Abigale/M Abilene/M ability/IMES abjection/MS abjectness/SM abject/SGPDY abjuration/SM abjuratory abjurer/M abjure/ZGSRD ablate/VGNSDX ablation/M ablative/SY ablaze abler/E ables/E ablest able/U abloom ablution/MS Ab/M ABM/S abnegate/NGSDX abnegation/M Abner/M abnormality/SM abnormal/SY aboard ...
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