Idealised love
Love presented in its most positive, transcendent, or spiritualised form—as ennobling, purifying, or offering meaning and completion. Idealised love often contrasts with realistic or destructive love presentations.
Real World
Keats's 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' presents idealised love as dangerously intoxicating — the knight's perfect vision of the faery woman leaves him 'haggard and woebegone', exposing idealism as self-delusion.
Exam Focus
Contrast idealised love with its consequences in the same text — examiners reward analysis of how writers simultaneously present and undercut idealism.
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