La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Question 1

Rhyme Scheme of LBD and Type of poem

Answer 1

• folk ballad - story of love and pain
• unreliable narrator
• abcb rhyme scheme

Question 2

Initial description of knight

Answer 2

• “knight-at-arms”
• “alone and palely loitering?”
• medieval, more romantic
• creepy
• victimisation

Question 3

Describe the initial description of setting

Answer 3

“The sedge has withered from the lake, / And no birds sing”
- isolated
- allusion to keats illness
- romantic hero
- nature dying - eco-critical
- autumnal setting; drawing to an end
- lang provokes pathos
- birds flown away - no life
- Noble birth

Question 4

Description of the knight as suffering

Answer 4

“haggard and so woe-begone?”

Question 5

Squrrel - ?

Answer 5

“The squirrel’s granary is full, And the harvest’s done”
- isolation, suffering, pity
- winter represents death

Question 6

Flower on his eye?
- suggestion of sickness

Answer 6

“I see a lily on thy brow”
- funeral flower, deatj, impending death
“moist and fever-dew”
“thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too”
- quickening; present tense

Question 7

Description of the lady/ villain

Answer 7

“lady in the meads”
“Full beautiful - a faery’s child, Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild”
- hair symbol of femininity
- femme fatal
- danger, passion sex. not human

Question 8

Knight showed his love for her she suggested she enjoyed it

Answer 8

“made a garland for her head”
“and fragrant zone”
“she looked at me as she did love, And made sweet moan”
- ornamenting; patronising?
- as if she loved him? unreliable
- sexual connotations

Question 9

metaphor for sex

Answer 9

“I set her on my pacing steed”
“all day long”
“would she bend, and sing a faery’s song”
- enthralled by her
- metaphor for sex
- enchanted by her

Question 10

She trapped him

Answer 10

“she found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna-dew”
- hunter + gatherer - providing shes in control
- sticky trap
- seduction; she’s powerful
- too good to be true

Question 11

She said she loves him

Answer 11

“in language strange she said-
‘I love thee true’.”
- how does he know - assumed - humorous

Question 12

The belle dam cries + he fixes it

Answer 12

“she wept and sighed full sore”
“I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four”
- double meaning?
- fem: women weak or manipulation
- wild=danger
- hubris
- control

Question 13

Beginning of downfall of tragic hero she put him to sleep

Answer 13

“lulled me asleep”
“cold hill side”
“Ah! woe betide!”
- pathetic fallacy

Question 14

Downfall of tragic hero: what did he see initially

Answer 14

“pale kings and princes”
“pale warriors, death-pale”
- beautiful women without mercy enchanted him; too much pride tragic flaw

Question 15

description of ghosts

Answer 15

“starved lips in the gloam”
“horrid warning gaped wide”
“found me here, On the cold hill’s side”
- sucked life out of them
- fem fetal: dangerous women
- miserable setting
- trapped
- repetitions

Question 16

cyclical structure

Answer 16

“alone and palely loitering”
“though the sedge is withered from the lake, and no birds sing”