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John Keats

Comments & Themes

  • Do Keats' poems offer a dreamy escape or do they dwell on man's suffering?

  • Is the female figure in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" a fatal enchantress?

  • Why do you think did Keats write two versions of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"? Did he have two audiences in mind? Does he have a scorning attitude vis a vis the literary establishment of the Indicator who presumably represent undebased literary sensibility?

  • Analyze the end of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci". Does the poem express the destructiveness of love? Does it end with a perfect union of lovers or with a sense of alienation and despair?

  • Can the nightmare vision of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" be attributed to the lady or the knight's disturbed imagination?

  • Is Keats being ironic on Romantic conventions in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci".

  • Analyze the quest theme of the ideal or idealism in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci". What does Keats infer on the limits of human understanding and the relationship between thee material and the spiritual world?

  • How does Keats explore the philosophical questions concerning the ideal, the limits of knowledge, the self's relation to truth and the sublime in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"?

  • Is the nightmare vision the knight experiences a vision of history?