La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1819)

Question 1

Has been read autobiographically as taking up Love [for Fanny Brawne, Death by Consumption, and … Poetry) and

Answer 1

as a distillation of the romance tradition running from Alain Chartier’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci provided the title up until lyrical ballads

Question 2

form, structure

Answer 2

12 stanza ballad in iambic tetrameter

Question 3

Le trimètre iambique

Answer 3

un vers utilisé dans la poésie antique, en grec ancien et – sous la forme légèrement différente du sénaire iambique – en latin. Il doit son nom au fait qu’il comporte trois pieds et qu’il est fondé sur l’ïambe. Ce vers est très souvent employé dans les dialogues de comédie et de tragédie.

Question 4

La césure dans trimètre iambique

Answer 4

Dans un trimètre iambique, la césure se place au milieu du deuxième pied de la manière suivant

BUH buh BUH / buh BUH buh

Le mot compris dans la césure est ainsi mis en valeur.

Question 5

Themes

Answer 5

Union of the imaginative and real

Question 6

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?

Answer 6

The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Question 7

And no birds sing.

Answer 7

spondee

and No birds sing

Question 8

sedge

Answer 8

Grasslike or rushlike plant that grows in wet areas.

Question 9

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?

Answer 9

The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

Question 10

haggard, woe-begone

Answer 10

wild-looking, about to happen

Question 11

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,

Answer 11

And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

Question 12

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,

Answer 12

Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

Question 13

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

Answer 13

She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan

Question 14

made sweet moan

Answer 14

Compare “virgin-choir to make delicious moan” from Ode to Psyche (30), written between April 21 and 30, 1819. Noted by John Barnard in John Keats: The Complete Poems (Penguin, 2003).

Question 15

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long

Answer 15

For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.

Question 16

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,

Answer 16

And sure in language strange she said—
‘I love thee true’.

Question 17

Echoes manna in the Bible, first described in Exodus, 16:14-21, 31. The Israelites eat the manna, a food miraculously supplied in the wilderness after the dew has lifted, in the morning: “The house of Israel called it manna; it was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey” (Exodus 16:31, NRSV).

Answer 17

honey-wild & manna-dew

Question 18

She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,

Answer 18

And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

Question 19

And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—

Answer 19

The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.

Question 20

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

Answer 20

They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Thee hath in thrall!’

Question 21

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,

Answer 21

And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.

Question 22

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,

Answer 22

Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Question 23

Derived from the ancient Greek word meaning “turning back upon,” ___________ is the repetition of phrases or words in a set of clauses, sentences, or poetic lines.

In contrast to the related term anaphora, epistrophe (or epiphora, as it is sometimes called) occurs at the end (rather than the beginning) of these lines or phrases. While this distinction may seem minor, the Greek philosopher Plato builds this end positioning into his theory of the self, which he also calls epistrophe. As you may recall from Plato’s famous allegory of the cave, people seeking enlightenment must turn away from the world outside ourselves. In leaving that false world behind, we “turn back to” our independent, logical selves to find truth.

Answer 23

epistrophe

Question 24

“La Belle Dame Sans Merci” is a ballad—one of the oldest poetic forms in English. Ballads generally use a bouncy rhythm and rhyme scheme to tell a story.

Answer 24

What is the story here? Why does Keats use a ballad form?

Think about an event that has happened to you recently and try to tell it in ballad form.

Question 25

The poem is a narrative of an encounter that entails both pleasure and pain.

Answer 25

What causes the pleasure? Wherein lies the pain? What is Keats saying about language and the sensible world? Think of a person you have met in your life who has brought you both joy and unhappiness. Write a poem that describes your first encounter and, like Keats, the moment you realized they had you “in thrall.”

Question 26

Keats wrote in a letter to his friend Richard Woodhouse, “A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has no Identity.”

Answer 26

Keats thought poets should remove their egos from their poetry, to better allow for poetry to happen unfiltered by personality. What similarities do you detect between the Knight in “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” and Keats’s idea of a poet?

Question 27

Go through and circle all of the poem’s adjectives. What do you notice about them?

Answer 27

Why does Keats use so many? What effects do they create? What happens when you read the poem without them?

Question 28

There are a few voices talking in this poem. Go through the poem and figure out who is speaking, and when: what does each voice say, and not say?

Answer 28

What is the effect of having multiple voices frame the poem? Who speaks and who doesn’t?

Question 29

Use “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” to do a brief introduction to meter and prosody. Ask your students to recite the refrain of a popular song, or one that gets stuck in their heads easily. Pull different kinds of metrical feet—anapest, dactyl, iamb, trochee, spondee—from the lyrics they give you (having a few songs in mind yourself may be helpful).

Answer 29

Emphasize that these names just describe the system of stressed syllables already inherent in English. Go through the different kinds of metrical feet with your students. Tell them they are going to play “Meter Madlibs,” and then hand out a few stanzas of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” with some of the words removed. On the board, write down the kind of foot that belongs in each blank space. “O what can ail thee ______________”[dactyl], for example. Have students work in groups to fill in the blank with their own words

Question 30

The rhyme scheme in “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” is consistent, but not exact. In groups have students go through and circle all the exact rhymes, put a square around all the slant rhymes, and underline the words that don’t seem to rhyme at all.

Answer 30

Review the different kinds of rhymes as a class. Then form a rhyme circle. Make whatever stipulations you want (no exact rhymes; only slant), say a word, and go around the circle using different kinds of rhyme on that word.