Hadst thou liv'd in days of old: medieval elements in Keats's poetry.

Abstract

During a brief period of his brief career, John Keats was highly influenced by the Middle Ages. A number of his poems reflect the literature of the Middle Ages in theme, imagery, genre, and sometimes form. After several excursions into the medieval period in his short poems, Keats first depicted the Middle Ages at length in the poem "Isabella~ or, The Pot of Basil," based on a narrative by Boccaccio. Keats creates a poetic version of the story significantly more medieval than even Boccaccio's medieval original. "The Eve of st. Agnes" shares some medieval elements with "Isabella" and adds still more. The poem is so infused with color and imagery traditionally associated with the writings of the Middle Ages that it eventually served as the inspiration for the Pre-Raphaelites. "The Eve of st. Mark," in addition to including numerous medieval details and imagery, is the first major poem in which Keats composes some lines in Middle English, a technique with which he experimented in earlier, briefer poems. The ballad "La belle dame sans merci" is Keats's final major poem to draw upon characteristics of medieval literature. Keats seems to have come to feel that the Middle Ages had failed him and he recorded his disillusion with the medieval period through the writing of "La belle dame sans merci." Keats, represented by the knight, is shown flirting with the Middle Ages, represented by the belle dame sans merci. In the end, the knight has lost the belle dame, as Keats has lost his desire for the resurrection of the Middle Ages through his poetry. Like the knight, who wanders around the withered sedge looking for the belle dame, Keats has attempted to capture the Middle Ages for his poetry. The hopeless tone of the poem and the fact that the belle dame is "sans merci" indicate that Keats has given up his search for those same elements--the belle dame--in his own poetry. He never experiments seriously with the characteristics of medieval literature again.