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Example research essay topic: Belle Dame Sans Merci Ode To A Nightingale - 1,451 words

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English Literature Outline Introduction. Prelude to Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth's main points. The Romantic Era and Wordsworth. John Keats. His Poetry and the Prelude.

Le Belle Dame sans Merci reflects the ideas of the Prelude. Emotions in Keats poetry. Use of alliteration. Use of ternary structure. Personification.

The role of Beauty in Keats poetry. Art is beautiful. Thoughts and feelings cannot be separated. 6. Conclusion. Wordsworth's monumental poetic legacy rests on a large number of important poems, varying in length and weight from the short, simple lyrics of the 1790 s to the vast expanses of The Prelude, thirteen books long in its 1808 edition. But the themes that run through Wordsworth's poetry, and the language and imagery he uses to embody those themes, remain remarkably consistent throughout the Wordsworth canon, adhering largely to the tenets Wordsworth set out for himself in the 1802 Prelude to Lyrical Ballads.

Here, Wordsworth argues that poetry should be written in the natural language of common speech, rather than in the lofty and elaborate diction's that were then considered poetic. He argues that poetry should offer access to the emotions contained in memory. And he argues that the first principle of poetry should be pleasure, that the chief duty of poetry is to provide pleasure through a rhythmic and beautiful expression of feeling -- for all human sympathy, he claims, is based on a subtle pleasure principle that is "the naked and native dignity of man. " (Anthology, p. 776) Wordsworth's poems initiated the Romantic era by emphasizing feeling, instinct, and pleasure above formality and mannerism. More than any poet before him, Wordsworth gave expression to inchoate human emotion; his lyric "Strange fits of passion have I known, " in which the speaker describes an inexplicable fantasy he once had that his lover was dead, could not have been written by any previous poet. Curiously for a poet whose work points so directly toward the future, many of Wordsworth's important works are preoccupied with the lost glory of the past -- not only of the lost dreams of childhood but also of the historical past, as in the powerful sonnet "London, 1802, " in which the speaker exhorts the spirit of the centuries-dead poet John Milton to teach the modern world a better way to live. John Keats lived from 1795 to 1821.

The poetry that we have from his brief, troubled life is filled with powerful imagery. Woodworths Prelude had a profound influence on Keats, which is evident throughout his works. Keats themes are those of the Romantic period: a worship of nature, senses, death, the individual, and a deep absorption with art, the imagination, and the realm created by the intersection of these things - fantasy and myth. The stress of most of his poems is on emotion, just like Wordsworth suggested in his Prelude. His poem, Le Belle Dame sans Merci was written in the last year of his life and describes the female temptress, and most importantly, the result of this temptation the consequences of love, is one of the best examples illustrating the influence of Woodworths Prelude. Keats poem is much simpler in structure and content than most of his other poems and yet it too portrays the same strength of imagery.

In fact, I find the imagery more effective in La Belle Dame sans Merci, as it is personal a character the knights feelings firsthand. Although Keats does echo the knights decay in the landscape, he has also interpreted a feeling of unrequited love, in his own, and equally successful way. The consequences of love for that beautiful lady are rather grave for the knight, however he still glorifies the feeling and the woman that has evoked that very feeling. The knight is certainly deceived by the woman he meets. He falls in love with this woman instantly and is convinced that she too is in love with him. The woman makes the knight fall for her by making herself beautiful.

The woman deceives the knight into trusting her and then when she takes him to her cave, she breaks his heart by leaving him after the knight wakes up from a nightmare. She uses her magical powers to make the knight fall for her then she breaks his heart. When the knight wakes up from his nightmare, he sees that she has left him. Thus, the consequences of his sudden love are rather grave desperation and frustration because he has just lost what he thought was his true and only love. In Ode to Psyche there is a seemingly endless use of alliteration.

The sibilance of how the secrets should be sung and the soft-handed slumber and the alliteration of t in these, though temple thou among with many more examples create an almost dreamlike and transient atmosphere within which to set the poem. This use of alliteration is also found in To Autumn where Keats uses the alliteration of m and s to open the poem with Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness. In Ode to a Nightingale the same technique is used to rather different effects. Here the alliterative d, p and m found throughout the first opening lines create a sluggish weightiness corresponding to Keats dull ache. (Anthology, p. 845 - 848) Although the atmosphere being created here is much different to the one used in Ode to Psyche, it is the sensations and feelings that are being highlighted through the use of alliteration. Another technique used by Keats to create a sensuous mood to his poetry and to show emotions is the repeated use of ternary structure. In Ode to a Nightingale ternary structure appears a number of times with the weariness, the fever and the fret and the grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild.

However, it is in Ode to Indolence where his use of threes is most obvious. As well as the detailed use of alliteration and ternary structure to create a desired effect, Keats also uses a number of other literal techniques that give his poetry a much more sensual feel with which to match the topics he addresses. One of the most obvious techniques, as already seen Ode to Indolence is that of personification. Not only are the titles of his odes personified, Psyche, Melancholy, Indolence and Autumn, with a Nightingale and a Grecian Urn already physical enough to address, but also many of the other abstract nouns that appear in the poems. In Ode to Nightingale, Death is personified as Keats calls him soft names in many a mused rhyme. Beauty is both personified in Ode to a Grecian Urn and Ode to Melancholy where Keats states that Beauty must die. (Anthology, p. 859) By personifying the untouchable, Keats makes feelings and other sensations much more obtainable.

By making a more physical connection between him and such abstract ideas, sensations are made more immediate. However it also makes them much more material and therefore removing them from a purely sensual experience. It is clear that Keats has given a lot of thought into the role of Beauty. It seems to suggest that art is beautiful as the unflinching representation of all aspect of true life and one of the most sensual experiences of them all.

By the pure nature of using a poem to explore sensations and feelings there is an immediate connection between thoughts and sensations. When using the medium of poetry it seems impossible to separate thoughts and written feelings, for one is just another take on the other. A poem is something over which great care is taken to build the structure and vocabulary around the subject matter. By looking at all the poems it appears that no matter what Keats was aiming to do, they end up dealing with very complex issues. Admittedly there is a divide between the poems that are purely debates on philosophical sensual issues, and the odes which are more focused on the sensations and wish for transcendence.

However this is only a very fine divide as both circumstances occur in both types of poems. It would appear that in the odes, Keats has certainly not found his life of sensations as he seems to be thinking too much about them. It would appear that it is virtually impossible to separate the two ideas of feelings and thoughts in a mortal world. Keats seems to enjoy the debate which sensations create far too much to be able to live in it without reflection, just like Wordsworth suggested in his Prelude stating that access to feelings and emotions should be offered by poetry. Words Count: 1, 360. Bibliography: 1.

The Norton Anthology of English Literature Seventh Edition, New York: Harper Collins, 1998.


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