LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI Flashcards
Elements of Tragedy: Tragic Victim/Hero
- “I awoke and found me here, on the cold hill’s side.”
- Put his trust in La Belle and has been betrayed and abandoned
Elements of tragedy: Tragic Villain
- “I set her on my pacing steed.” + “I shut her wild wild eyes.”
- controlling woman- she has no voice, it is the male speakers in the patriarchal world who speak for her
Elements of tragedy: Tragic Ending
- “This is why I soujourn here, Alone and palely loitering.”
- Knight has lost his identity- he has no purpose
- Bleak language implies death
ELEMENTS OF TRAGEDY: Isolation
- “Alone and palely loitering” - he has no one anymore
ELEMENTS OF TRAGEDY: Resolution
Incremental repetition from Stanza 1 emphasises cyclical structure: no room for hope or happy resolution
ELEMENTS OF TRAGEDY: Death
- “The harvest’s done.” + “I see a lily on thy brow.”
ELEMENTS OF TRAGEDY: Treatment of Women
- “La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Thee hath in thrall.”
- Blames women for his poor decisions- she has no voice
ELEMENTS OF ROMANTICISM: Emotional Intensity
“She looked at me as she did love”
ELEMENTS OF ROMANTICISM: Reversal of Stereotypes
“She found me roots of relish sweet”
“She lulled me to sleep”
ELEMENTS OF ROMANTICISM: Exiled Hero
“And I awoke and found myself here, on the cold hillside”
ELEMENTS OF ROMANTICISM: Mythology
“Manna-dew”- food of the gods
WHAT IS A BALLAD
- A narrative poem originally meant to be sung
- Traditionally, ballads explore themes of love, death and/or the supernatural
Connotations of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (the beautiful lady without pity)
- Femme fatale- attracts lovers only to destroy them by supernatural powers
- She’s all at once beautiful, erotically attractive, fascinating + deadly
Structure
- Rhyme Scheme: ABCB (regular)
- Stanza scheme: Quatrain (4 lines)
- Iambic tetrameter for 3 lines of stanzas; Iambic Dimeter (only two stressed syllables) for 4th line only
Effect of Iambic Dimeter in last line
Shortening of last line gives each stanza an abrupt, slightly ominous ending as if its not quite finished (scary)
“Alone and palely loitering”
- Stanza 1
- differs from typical view of the knights of romanticism
- this knight has no purpose and is aimless- he subverts stereotypes
“The sedge has withered from the lake/And no birds sing”
- Stanza 1
- Pathetic fallacy: natural setting is dark and wintery
- Semantic field of death + lack of growth echoes the direction the knight will go in
“O what can ail thee knight at arms?”
- Stanza 1 and 2
- Anaphora: there is nothing to be done to help the knight
“I see a lily on thy brow.”
- Stanza 3
- Traditional funeral flower
“With anguish moist and fever dew.”
- Stanza 3
- describing cold morning grass- he’s become a part of the cold dismal landscape
“On thy cheeks a fading rose.”
- Stanza 3
- Metaphor- rose is symbol of love
- Just like the colour is fading from his cheeks, his trust in love is also fading
“Fast withereth too.”
- Stanza 3
- Motif of withering- reinforces decaying landscape and cements knight’s fate
Significance of repeated ‘f’ sounds in Stanza 3
Imitating sucked in breath and shivering of someone suffering with cold (can feel the knight suffering)
“a lady in the meads.”
- Stanza 4
- Setting shift to whimsical spring
- Romanticism and pastoral- juxta to harsh winter
