Romantic Eros: A Reading of Longing as Lack in “La Belle Dame sans Merci” by John Keats, and “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe

Resumen

This study analyzes the poems “La Belle Dame sans Merci” by John Keats, and “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe, through the lens of Romantic Hellenism. We propose a comparative reading of both poems based on Carson’s (2014) concept of Eros as bittersweet, particularly through the triangulation of the desire as lack, as proposed in her reading of Sappho. In this way, we analyze the intersections between the poems and the vision of love and desire in ancient Greece, and how their echoes are present in 19th-century English literature, taken up by Romantic poets.