la belle dame sans merci- poetic inspiration or negative female stereotypes?

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LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

Question: Is ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ a poem about negative female stereotypes or about poetic creation and poetic sensibility?

‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ is written in ballad form. Typically the ballad is dramatic, condensed and impersonal: the narrator begins with the climactic episode, tells the story curtly by means of action or in this case by means of dialogue alone. It is told without self reference or the expression of personal attitudes and feelings. Keats does not differ here. Ballads also employ set formulas including stock descriptive phrases like ‘blood-red wine’ and ‘milk-white steed’. There is a refrain in each stanza and incremental repetition. Keats differs slightly in the ballad stanza format making the last line of each stanza shorter than the others.

‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ literally means- ‘beautiful woman without pity’. It is, on the surface, a simple story describing the ill fate of a knight-at-arms. By the very name of the ballad people can deem is to be about negative female stereotypes. But on the other hand one can see the knight as a poet that finds poetic inspiration- symbolised in the figure of the woman- and then has it leave him abruptly.

Feminists see this as another example of negative stereotyping of women in literature- a manifestation of whatever is happening in a society dominating by patriarchan values. The male sees himself as a victim figure used badly by a wicked, treacherous temptress who uses enchantment to destroy a knight and make him neglect his duties and responsibilities. It is considered to be about the ‘femme fatale’. Only the male opinion is expressed in the poem- we hear only the knight’s side of the story.

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        Some think that the poem is about poetic imagination, inspiration and the loss of it. Mario L. D’Avanzo says that it ‘describes perfectly the poet’s semicircular arc of imaginative assent, fulfilment and decline into the world of reality’. The knight is compared to a poet and the ‘death-pale’ warriors, princes and kings could also have been compared to poets agonised by reality and the end of their imaginative trance; while the lady is compared to the poetic inspiration and the act of poetic creation that captivates them for a while and then leaves them. Keats’ recurring subtle metaphors regarding the ...

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