La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Question 1

Which literary movement does John Keats belong to?

Answer 1

THE ROMANTICS <3<3<3<3

Question 2

What form is La Belle written in?

Answer 2

A Ballad

Question 3

What does the title of La Belle translate to?

Answer 3

The beautiful woman without mercy

Question 4

How does La Belle subvert the typical romantic ideal of beauty as truth/ goodness?

Answer 4

The woman’s beauty is actually a mask for deception.

Question 5

How does La Belle present love as unchanging and something which stunts a persons growth

Answer 5

Cyclic structure of the ballad

Imagery of illness and frailty

Question 6

Why does Keats write about illness?

Answer 6

He was in the throws of TB when writing it

Question 7

What does the woman represent in La Belle? (x5)

Answer 7

A personification of death or TB
Unreality of love
Female power/ female deception
Metaphor for drug abuse
The Muse of poetry

Question 8

Quotes that show emasculation of love in La Belle (x4)

Answer 8

“Alone and palely loitering”
“On thy cheek a fading rose”
“Pale warriors, death pale”
“She lulled me to sleep”

Question 9

Quotes about love as supernatural/ fantastical in La Belle (x5)

Answer 9

“A faery’s child…her foot was light…her eyes were wild”
“A faery’s song”
“She took me to her elfin grot”
“La Belle Dame Sans Merci thee hath in thrall”
“No birds sing”

Question 10

Quotes of male aggression/ toxic masculinity in La Belle (x3)

Answer 10

“I made a garland for her head, and bracelets too”
“I set her on my pacing steed”
“Knight at arms”

Question 11

Romantic ideals reflected in Keats’ poetry

Answer 11

Beauty of nature
relationship between imagination and creativity
Passionate responses to beauty and suffering
Transience of human life

Question 12

How does La Belle show Keats’ fear of falling in love?

Answer 12

extended male fantasy- blaming a woman for everything
Supernatural imagery
Ballad form- often had a warning or a moral

Question 13

Quotes about female power in La Belle (x4)

Answer 13

“She lulled me to sleep”
“Found me roots of relish sweet and honey wild”
“Her wild, wild eyes”
“Alone and palely loitering”

Question 14

Example of use of similes too create doubt about the speakers intentions, and the woman’s thoughts in La Belle

Answer 14

“She looked at me as she did love”

Question 15

How Keats’ creates doubts about the narrators reliability

Answer 15

Similes- indirect expression of woman’s views
Lack of female voice
Female passivity and weakness

Question 16

Key structural techniques in La Belle and their effect

Answer 16

Cyclic structure- sense of unending, or the power of love (infatuation) to stop time/ growth

Short final line to each stanza- creates a sense of unbalance, disrupts fluidity to hint at the unnatural

Question 17

What does Keats say about love in La Belle Dame Sans Merci?

Answer 17

Love as emasculating/ an illness
Love as trance-like or a dream- fleeting
Fear of falling in love
Love as cyclic, cause of deterioration

Question 18

What is the plot of La Belle Dame Sans Merci?

Answer 18

A knight recounts a romantic encounter with a fey that ended with a dark vision of her other lovers crying out for help. The encounter leaves him visibly weakened/ ill