A2 English Literature
A2 English Literature Keats Discuss Keats' depiction of love in the poems 'La Belle Dame sans Merci', 'Isabella' and 'The Eve of St Agnes' At the centre of Keats's imaginative achievement lie the two narrative poems, 'Isabella' and 'The Eve of St Agnes' and the ballad 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'. What links these three poems is their attention to the concept of love and relationships between men and women. There are many parallels between 'La Belle Dame sans Merci', 'Isabella' and 'The Eve of St Agnes', and owing to the fact that 'Isabella' and 'The Eve of St Agnes' were written within months of one another, one might reasonably expect to find similarities of interest, theme or mood between them, however unique and distinctive each poem may be. Whilst 'Isabella' and 'The Eve of St Agnes' are both narrative poems, 'La Belle Dame sans Merci's "brief, restrained, ballad-like form" has been said to "raise different questions from those which arise in extended narrative." What is noticeable about Keats's work is that it can be related to inner conflicts, as love is intertwined with pain, and pleasure is intertwined with death, in the three poems 'La Belle Dame sans Merci,' 'Isabella' and 'The Eve of St Agnes'. 'La Belle Dame sans Merci', which translates as 'The beautiful lady without mercy', takes its title from an early 15th Century poem by Alain Chartier and is thought to
"Keats' Odes are obsessed by the imagination's possibilities and limits." Discuss.
"Keats' Odes are obsessed by the imagination's possibilities and limits." Discuss. Keats, throughout his creative career, continually returned to the concept of the imagination. He professed a great belief in the imagination's power to create and recreate the world, famously writing "The imagination can be compared to Adam's dream, he awoke and found it truth."1 The possibilities and limits of the imagination are a recurring theme throughout the major odes as Keats contemplates both the heights which can be achieved "On the viewless wings of Poesy," and also the failings of the "deceiving elf" fancy. The odes employ complex imaginary concepts, building images and worlds in the imagination but they contrast these images with the realities of human existence. Keats therefore creates a conflict between the compelling but elusive fantasies of the imagination and the hard but necessary realities of human existence. The concept of the imagination changes and develops throughout the odes moving from a generally positive endorsement of the imaginative powers in Ode to Psyche to a seeming rejection of imaginative escapism in Ode to Melancholy and finally achieving reconciliation between imagination and reality in To Autumn. as N. F. Ford argues: "Given its different perspective and emphasis each of the odes actively involves us in a process of imaginative intuition that leads to a
Analyse the poem 'Ode to a Grecian Urn' and comment on the poetic form and language used and the way they contribute to the meaning and effects of the poem.
Analyse the poem 'Ode to a Grecian Urn' and comment on the poetic form and language used and the way they contribute to the meaning and effects of the poem. In the early 19th century it was not unusual to make a work of art, painting or sculpture a subject of a poem. Taken literally, the poem 'Ode to a Grecian Urn' is a poem about a vase, but Keats has inverted the traditional understanding of physical, tangible objects and transformed them into metaphors for abstract concepts, such as truth and time. An urn is primarily used to preserve the ashes of the dead. The theme of the Ode, accordingly, has to do with the relationship between imagination and actuality, and the supremacy and immortality of a work of art if compared to our ordinary life. With the masterful use of the device of figurative language, Keats has created a melodic, beautifully flowing poem which well serves the purpose he gives it. Keats himself can be assumed to be the speaker, the overall setting is unknown. The tone of the poem reflects the fact that Keats seems truly awed and astonished by the urn he considers. The poem is written in ten-line iambic pentameter throughout, which creates a flowing rhythmic effect. The rhyme scheme is unusual, but Keats breaks the form with this five-part poem. The rhyme pattern is A - B - A - B - C - D - E - D - C - E. There is a pattern of interwoven