'La Belle Dame sans Merci': The Knight

Question 1

“O what can ail thee, Knight-at-arms?”

I

Answer 1

• Omniscent sentence.
• ‘Knight-at-arms’: Character of status. Conventional to tragic genre.
• Repeated in the second stanza. Allusion to his inescapable and inevitable cyclical fate.

Question 2

“So haggard and so woe-begone.”

II

Answer 2

• ‘Haggard’ The knight is not in any condition to no is he attempting to change his fate. –> Ineffectual cycle.
• ‘woe-begone’ entrenches the miserly and pessimistic tone.

Question 3

“I set her on my pacing steed.”

VI

Answer 3

• ## ‘I’ False pretense of control. The knight believes he is in control but it is the Faery in control instead.

Question 4

“Alone and palely loitering.”

I

Answer 4

• Display of vunerability which is uncharacteristic of a Knight. A subversion of expectations. –> Disorder is already prevalent in the poem.

Question 5

“She brought me roots of relish sweet and honey wild and manna dew.”

VII

Answer 5

• Juxaposition to the surroundings described earlier in the poem.
• Are these fruits of enchantment? Is the knight actually eating rotten fruit from the withered sedge around him?
• The faery bringing him “roots of relish sweets” could be interpreted as a biblical allusion to the Garden of Eden; the Faery acting as the snake that tempts Eve (The Knight) and subsequently gets her and Adam exiled from the paradise garden.