Philological Quarterly, March 22nd, 2000
Critics have identified a considerable array of possible sources for Keats's La Belle Dame sans Merci including, but not limited to, Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, and Canto 5 of Dante's Inferno. Ballads, such as Thomas the Rhymer and the kind of popular ballad collected by Percy and later by Child, have also been cited for their influence on Keats's ballad. One commonly accepted source is Alain Chartier's medieval work by the same name, though it is commonly asserted that Keats took only the title from Chartier's work. (1) As the plethora of other claimed sourc...
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