La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Question 1

😂 Belle dans sans mercy is the title of an early 15th century French poem by who which belongs to the tradition of courtly love?

Answer 1

Alan Chartier

Question 2

La Belle is the title of an early 15th century poem by Alan Chartier which belongs to the tradition of what?

Answer 2

courtly love

Question 3

What does the woman construct do in this poem?

Answer 3

she is a seductress who tempts men away from the real world and then leaves them and their dreams unfulfilled and their lives blighted

Question 4

For all the beguiling simplicity of the surfaces of this literary ballad, it is one of the most difficult of Keats’ poems to explain and open to what?

Answer 4

many interpretations

Question 5

What does a femme fatale do?

Answer 5

she conventionally tempts man with her beauty and ultimately causes his destruction

Question 6

How is it immediately suggested that the knight at arms has been enchanted and enthralled?

Answer 6

by the fact that he has wandered into a desolate wasteland where the plant life has withered and no birds sing

Question 7

the knight at arms is in a decline; he is pale and the rose in his cheeks, like the ______, is withering?

Answer 7

sedge

Question 8

How does the narrator identify the woman construct as a supernatural being?

Answer 8

“faery’s child” with “wild wild eyes”

Question 9

What can be suggested by the fact that she “lulled” him to sleep?

Answer 9

“lulled” can denote an attempt to calm someones dears or suspicions by deception, indicating he has something to fear

Question 10

Why does the knight at arms “sojourn here”?

Answer 10

as he is “in thrall” with the beautiful lady without pity

Question 11

What creates a haunting ominous effect?

Answer 11

through Keats’ use of the formal features of the traditional ballad

Question 12

Keats’ shortens the ballad form in the last line of each stanza, what is the effect of this?

Answer 12

it cuts off and suggests there is something being withheld or absent to the reader

Question 13

How can the knight not be made into a complete victim?

Answer 13

as he courts the lady and creates garlands for her head to decorate, bind and enclose her.

Question 14

How is it suggested that the knight claims possession of the lady?

Answer 14

as he sets “her on my pacing steed”

Question 15

How does the lady react to being set on his pacing steed?

Answer 15

“she wept, and sigh’d full sore”

Question 16

How can it be suggested that the knight actually manipulates what she says into what he wants to hear?

Answer 16

as he claims she speaks in a ‘language strange” yet claims she said ‘I love thee true”

Question 17

How might a feminist critic review the poem?

Answer 17

they may suggest that it is the woman who is in fact that victim as the contradictions and lacunae (missing pieces” offers a counter reading

Question 18

How does Keats place the definers of the woman in the patriarchle world?

Answer 18

as it is the knight who tells the story of the lady for us to question her and it is he who desires to withdraw from the masculine world of duties and responsibilites

Question 19

The knight and kings recognise that the power and stability of the patriarchal world depends on the rejection of the urge to withdraw from it into the dream state, who do they balme?

Answer 19

the woman as a temptress for losing them their masculintity to which she soothes them and “lulled” away their duties

Question 20

Why is the knight at arms trapped in the barren landscape neither in the masculine world nor the feminine bower?

Answer 20

as he withdrew from his duties and responisbitlies of the formers into he luxurious pleasures and thus undermined the definitions and assigned roles of the male and female; instead now he is in limbo