Archetypes in John Keats La Belle Dame Sans Merci: A Ballad Essay

Archetypes in John Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci: A Ballad" During the Romantic Movement in literature, numerous writers fed off one another’s ideas; thus, creating various patterns which reoccur throughout literary works. According to â€Å"The Literature Network,† John Keats is â€Å"usually regarded as the archetype of the Romantic writer.† Therefore, Keats himself is thought to be the original model for the writer during the Romantic Era. In his poem, â€Å"La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad,† Keats uses various archetypes which provide added meaning and depth to this work of literature. The archetype may be defined as â€Å"the original model from which something is developed or made; in literary criticism, those images, figures, character types, settings, and story patterns that†¦are universally shared by people across cultures† (Murfin and Ray 29). Analytical psychologist Carl Jung believes that archetypes are â€Å"embedded deep in humanity’s collective unconscious and involve ‘racial memories’ of situations, events, and relations that have been part of human experience from the beginning† (Murfin and Ray 29). Therefore, the archetype reoccurs over and over again in literary works from all time periods, such as seasonal connotations. For example, the season of spring is commonly associated with comedy, while summer is affiliated with romance. Archetypal, or Jungian, criticism focuses on the various archetypes which occur in literature. It emerged in the 1930s and primarily â€Å"focuses on those patterns in a particular literary work that commonly recur in other literary works† (Murfin and Ray 28). Northrop Frye, author of The Anatomy of Criticism, â€Å"viewed the vast corpus of literary works as a ‘self-contained literar... ...ot present within the poem, readers would not automatically associate the characters and images with a prior memory; thus, readers would not be able to become aware of the circumstances and nature of the characters quite as easily. Therefore, the archetypal characters and images in Keats’ â€Å"La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad† provide important insights into the depth and meaning of the characters and occurrences within the poem itself. Works Cited â€Å"John Keats.† The Literature Network. 21 Feb. 2006 . Keats, John. â€Å"La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad.† The Norton Anthology of English Literature Seventh Edition, Volume 2. Ed. M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2000. 845-846. Murfin, Ross & Ray, Supryia M. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms: Second Edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.