La Belle Dame Sans Merci Flashcards
😂 Belle dans sans mercy is the title of an early 15th century French poem by who which belongs to the tradition of courtly love?
Alan Chartier
La Belle is the title of an early 15th century poem by Alan Chartier which belongs to the tradition of what?
courtly love
What does the woman construct do in this poem?
she is a seductress who tempts men away from the real world and then leaves them and their dreams unfulfilled and their lives blighted
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?
many interpretations
What does a femme fatale do?
she conventionally tempts man with her beauty and ultimately causes his destruction
How is it immediately suggested that the knight at arms has been enchanted and enthralled?
by the fact that he has wandered into a desolate wasteland where the plant life has withered and no birds sing
the knight at arms is in a decline; he is pale and the rose in his cheeks, like the ______, is withering?
sedge
How does the narrator identify the woman construct as a supernatural being?
“faery’s child” with “wild wild eyes”
What can be suggested by the fact that she “lulled” him to sleep?
“lulled” can denote an attempt to calm someones dears or suspicions by deception, indicating he has something to fear
Why does the knight at arms “sojourn here”?
as he is “in thrall” with the beautiful lady without pity
What creates a haunting ominous effect?
through Keats’ use of the formal features of the traditional ballad
Keats’ shortens the ballad form in the last line of each stanza, what is the effect of this?
it cuts off and suggests there is something being withheld or absent to the reader
How can the knight not be made into a complete victim?
as he courts the lady and creates garlands for her head to decorate, bind and enclose her.
How is it suggested that the knight claims possession of the lady?
as he sets “her on my pacing steed”
How does the lady react to being set on his pacing steed?
“she wept, and sigh’d full sore”
How can it be suggested that the knight actually manipulates what she says into what he wants to hear?
as he claims she speaks in a ‘language strange” yet claims she said ‘I love thee true”
How might a feminist critic review the poem?
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
How does Keats place the definers of the woman in the patriarchle world?
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
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?
the woman as a temptress for losing them their masculintity to which she soothes them and “lulled” away their duties
Why is the knight at arms trapped in the barren landscape neither in the masculine world nor the feminine bower?
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
