La belle dans sans merci Flashcards
structure
ballad- tells the story and helps present beauty
regular pattern of quatrains throughout
ABCB rhyme scheme
ring compostion
reflects the fact that he is now trapped by his love and that he will never get over her or escape the cycle of heartbreak. This is also emphasised by the opening word of the piece ‘o’ which creates the effect of a never-ending cycle.
the last line of each stanza is short, which gives the effect of being unfinished. Reflects the fact he feels he never has or will achieve love
beginning
piece starts with ominous tone and foreshadows events to come
uses pathetic fallacy of ‘paley loitering’ and ‘no birds sing’ to reflect the heartbreak which the man has experienced and to foreshadow and to show his inner emotions and the time
we see how badly the writer is affected which suggests his desire for the girl was deep
‘i see a lily on thy brow’
‘and on thy cheek a fading rose’
not only reflect the mans appearance, but also suggest some deeper analysis. Lilies are often associated with death and roses are often associated with love, so this could symbolise that their love is doomed and fading away and that only dark things can come of it.
‘faery’s child’
‘her foot was light’
uses a metaphor and a synecdoche to suggest that she is a graceful and beautiful person, who carries herself extremely well, however there is an underlying suggestion that she is not who she seems to be, and she is compared to the supernatural creature of a fairy, who are often known for tricks and mind games, which foreshadows later events.
also seen in the quote ‘wild willd eyes’ suggesting she is not human and does not have human values
‘she looked as me as she did love’
misinterpreted what she ws thinking
she never said she loved him
she was simply lustful
‘langauge strange’
metaphor for the fact that he may have misinterpreted what she said and that the feelings are not mutual
‘she lulled me asleep’
has a sophorific effect on him
also the word lulled suggests a dark nature
‘the last dream i ever drempt’
from then on could not rest, always thinking about the girl.
ending
describes the fact that the same thing has happened to kings and princes shows that love caused man hearts to break and it doesn’t matter what status or wealth u have
‘i saw their starved lips in the gloam with horrid waning gaped wide’
nightmare imagery of how the men look after being abandoned from the women, shows how deeply they affected them
drugs
there are multiple suggestions within the piece that the poem is a metaphor for something much deeper. This is due to the fact that the writer was a known opium user at the time, and the symptoms in which the writer is experiencing after heartbreak are very similar to those which can be experienced after withdrawal from drugs and opium specifically.
For example he is described as ‘pale’ and ‘starved’ aka common symptoms.
he suggests through the metaphor of the girl that it is an uncontrollable addiction that will never leave him and leaves him feeling constantly unsatisfied without it. ‘ i shut her wild eyes with kisses four’ could metaphorically be describing the act in which he inhaled the drug and put his troubles and concerns away and made him feel better.
the drug also could have ‘lulled him to sleep’ and he woke up on a ‘cold hill side’ after the drugs wore off
