Talk:La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad

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La Belle Dame sans Merci is actually another name for opium. The writer was, at the time, addicted to opium. So the poem is simply a metaphor for the drug. The man wants to keep seeing the fairy, so he can have a wonderful time, but he knows he will end up in a depressing state if he does.

No, it's not. This poem is dumb dont read it!!

The opium theory is plausible. Dark Ladies have often been used as a symbol of destructive self-indulgence (Shakespeare sonnets, Swinburne Dolores). The use of opium was common in Bohemian circles of that day. Keats' contemporary, De Quincy, was a self-advertising opium addict.

-- I think, however, that if he were ever addicted to opium, we'd have heard about it. Opium would have been hard to get away from, as it was for Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Surely Keats would have written about it in his letters and it would have affected his work...and if he's writing the poem from an addict's standpoint, I find that hard to believe. None of his other work would give credibility to that.

[edit] Feminist Rape Theory!!!

"More recent feminist commentators have suggested that the knight in fact raped the Belle Dame, and is being justly punished"

Where did you get this from? There is no actual basis or reference for this whatsoever. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Badger23 (talk • contribs) 15:23, 7 March 2007 (UTC). --Badger23 16:02, 7 March 2007 (UTC)