La Belle Dame sans Merci

To mark 200 years since the publication of ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad’, Keats House is presenting a series of short online lectures for you to enjoy at home.

The poem may be based on medieval ballads, but it was also inspired by Keats’s favourite poets from the eighteenth century. Dr Tess Somervell (University of Leeds) will uncover some of these lesser-known influences. Professor Kelvin Everest (University of Liverpool) will consider in close detail the formal artistry of Keats's poem. Dr Anna Mercer (Cardiff University) will discuss how we might read Keats’s poem alongside works by other second-generation Romantic writers.

Lecture 1 - Dr Tess Somervell

The poem may be based on medieval ballads, but it was also inspired by Keats’s favourite poets from the eighteenth century, in this short lecture Dr Tess Somervell (University of Leeds) will uncover some of these lesser-known influences.

Lecture 2 - Professor Kelvin Everest

In the second lecture in this series, Professor Kelvin Everest (University of Liverpool) will consider in close detail the formal artistry of Keats's poem, discussing how the poem creates its distinctive atmosphere through subtle variations of line-length, rhyme, metre and rhythm, sound, speaker, and tense.

Lecture 3 - Dr Anna Mercer

In the third lecture of this series, Dr Anna Mercer (Cardiff University) will discuss how we might read Keats’s poem alongside works by other second-generation Romantic writers.