YOUNG MAN’S DELUSION: FATALITY IN JOHN KEATS’S TIME’S SEA AND LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI
YOUNG MAN’S DELUSION: FATALITY IN JOHN KEATS’S TIME’S SEA AND LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

Summary/Abstract: To say that the figure of the femme fatale is a recurrent motif in John Keats’s poems is to state the obvious. What is less transparent, however, is Keats’s construction of this popular topos. The purpose of this paper is to look at two poems: Time’s Sea and La Belle Dame sans Merci in the context of Keats’s conviction that an intense love affair must be destructive to the male self and to show how male lovers in these poems actually cast their beloved women as fatal. To do this, first I intend to look at Keats’s letters to Fanny Brawne, which I believe help to see his texts in the perspective which is interesting for my purposes, and then to pass on to a close analysis of both poems in question.

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