La belle Dame Sans Merci Flashcards
O what can all the knight at arms
Refrain, illustrates speaker’s concern for the knight emphasises state of distress and illness he’s in and it’s asked twice so we inference he could not initially ask speakers question
Alone
Adjective, emphasises he’s in a poor emotional and physical state
Sedge has withered
Pathetic fallacy, gloomy sad a d depressing
And no birds sing
Structure, End stop line created an eerie mood with no joy reflecting a joyless mood of the Knight
Haggard and so woe begone
Adjective emphasises he’s in a poor physical and emotional state
Granary and harvest done
Late autumn symbolises season of increasing and dying in nature, granary is positive image of abundance in control to knights loss
A lily/ fading rose
Flower imagery, symbolises deathly paleness of knights white brow, he’s lost his colour, vitality
Fever-dew
Noun, could reflect Keats illness and experiences of turbucoloses implies knight is lovesick and ill
Beautiful fairy’s child
Suggests she has magical powers and bewitched him leaving him spell bound
Her eyes were wild
Foreshadows she’s uncontrollable and untamed so potentially dangerous
I made
knight I’d active and making her gifts
Fragrant zone
Euphemism for private parts
Nothing else saw all day long
Blinded and obsessed with her through a desire for her
A faerys song
Symbol of sexual desire a man’s weakness for sec and lust. Anxiety of loosing power
She found me
She is now active
Roots of relish sweet
Sibilance, has a sinister undertone, hissing snakes connotes to garden of Eden and temptation
Manna due
He sees her as angelic and feels like he’s metaphorically gone to heaven
Elfin grot
Emphasises she’s from another worldly magic
Wild wild eyes
Repetition shows she’s uncontrollable
She lulled me
Lull a baby to sleep she has infantantalised him
Ah! Woe betide!-
Caesura structurally emphasises the Turning point in poem and shows women is dangerous to men he’s a victim
Pale kings and princes too
Listing of figures, shows ladies power is even more than the most powerful men and kings and warriors
Starved lips
Irony as she has been feeding him yet he’s starved and weak it could also mean staved of her attention
With horrid warning gaped wide
Assonance, emphasises the horror of their warning, trying to warn the night of her power and affect
Alone and parley loitering, though sedge is withered from the lake
Cyclical structure suggest his fate is unescapable he will end up like all princes etc before him who tried to warn him.
And no birds sing
Birds symbolise freedom and joy, this implies knight lost all his freedom
Message
Knights encounter with Belle Dame reflects men’s anxieties with being emasculated by women’s sexual power over them
