'La Belle Dame sans Merci': The Faery Flashcards
1
Q
“I met a lady in the meads.”
IV
A
Femme Fatale of the poem.
2
Q
“Her hair was long,”
IV
A
- Loose hair: Sensual and promiscuous connotations. Faery is a sexual and tempting being.
3
Q
“her foot was light.”
IV
A
- Graceful but unpredictable and deceptive.
4
Q
“and her eyes were wild.”
IV
A
- Assonance (repetition of the vowel sound across words within the lines of the poem creating internal rhymes) of ‘e’ which suggests enchantment.
- Faery is the physical embodiement of chaos. Eyes are windows to the soul.
- ‘wild’ foreboding of later disorder and disaster.
- Wildness implies chaos. It is foreshadowing that the faery is animalistic and other-worldly and therefore cannot be contained or controlled.
- First allusion to an element of danger within the poem.
5
Q
“Full beautiful - a faery’s child.”
IV
A
- ‘Faery’ –> Mythical/inhuman.
- Ethereal figure that it is dream-like.
- Celtic association
- Faery’s were typically deceptive.
6
Q
“‘La Belle Dame sans Merci has thee in thrall!’”
X
A
- Clear warning.
- The Faery is not what she seems
- AOT: Manipulation, Tragic Villian.
7
Q
“She took me to her elfin grot. There she wept and sighed full sore.”
VIII
A
- ‘She took me’ –> Faery is in control.
- ‘Elfin grot’ –> Typical ethereal setting. Entrenches suggestions of enchantment.
- ‘Wept and sighed full sore.” –> Manipulation. The faery is luring the knight into sympathising with her to render him vunerable.
8
Q
“For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.”
A
- ‘Sidelong’ She is not being truthful. The knight is literally only percieving one side of her.
- ‘Faery’s song,’ Siren song connotations
