'knight at arms'と'wretched wight' : 'La belle dame sans merci'の改訂について
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概要
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There are two versions of Keats's 'La belle dame sans merci'; the original 'knight at arms' version (April 21, 1819) and the revised 'wretched wight' version (printed in The Indicator, May 10,1820). Critics say, with reason, that the revision was made for the worse. In the present essay an attempt is made to explain how the ballad came to be revised. As critics say. there is some resemblance between 'Thomas Rymer' and 'La belle dame'. The folk ballad tells that the protagonist became a seer by the aid of the Elfqueen. And we can find something similar in Keats's ballad. The knight, with whom the poet may be identified, could see the world of the alive (the questioner) and that of the dead (the kings, etc.). The latter was seen in a dream (imagination) given by 'la belie dame' (Muse). The knight-poet was 'loitering' between the two worlds. He was mentally free and imaginative enough to observe his conditions as a whole : he meditated on them, and wrote his understanding in a ballad. His objective attitude helped him to create an 'objective correlative'. But it seems that the poet never valued this 'masterpiece' highly: he may have found in it some 'excuse' for his situation. And the 'wretched' condition in the later stage of his life deprived him of his mental freedom and imaginative faculty, and very likely caused him to alter the ballad into a subjective poem-a poem of almost selfpity : most of the changes in the latter version followed as the necessary result.
- 東海大学の論文