The knight says that he met a beautiful, fairy-like “lady” in the “meads,” or fields. The speaker of the poem come across a “knight at arms” alone, and apparently dying, in a field somewhere. The first three stanzas comprise the questions raised by the poet to the knight. The beautiful lady took the knight to her elfin grot and there she spoke her grief out to the knight. You might compare this poem’s content to “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe, or its structure to “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. When he wakes up he finds that the lady has disappeared and he is forced to loiter aimlessly with the anguish of unrequited loved. Considered an English classic, the poem is an example of Keats' poetic preoccupation with love and death. Both the poems 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' and 'Isabella, or The Pot of Basil' are by John Keats and are on the theme of love. 14. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his works having been in publication for only four years before his death from tuberculosis at the age of 25.. Another Romantic poem that reaches back into the medieval world is John Keats‘ “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (1819)–taking the title but not exactly the theme from the courtly love tradition. The characteristics of Keats’ poetry are: worship of beauty, richness of the literary expressions and the extraordinary freshness of his poetry. She could attract a man’s heart and impress him easily. Compare 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' and 'Isabella, or The Pot of Basil' Essay 971 Words | 4 Pages. She was so beautiful that one could easily guess her as a fairy’s child. He did know Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) and William Wordsworth (1770–1850), but he was not comfortable with most other Romantic poets. At the end the lady goes away indifferent to dance and play while the lover is desperate to tear his hair and die. The knight says that the fairy lady found him tasty roots, honey, and manna to eat (“of relish sweet”). This allusion becomes even more potent when it’s associated with the “honey wild” that the fairy lady fed the knight. There aren't any quotation marks to tip you off to the change in speaker, so you have to pay attention to notice that the "I" of stanzas 4-12 is different from … 2017. She was very beautiful. John Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci." Her hair was long, her feet were light. When John Keats was finishing “La Belle Dame sans Merci” in the early spring of 1819, he was just weeks away from composing what would become some of English literature’s most sustained and powerful odes. “Haggard and woe-begone,” just like the knight in Keats’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci. The knight has finished his story. "La Belle Dame sans Merci" is a ballad produced by the English poet John Keats in 1819. 2. Who is being addressed at the beginning of the poem? The Knight was all alone and palely loitering by the cold hill sides. All of them were looking death-pale. Ans. Ballad is one of the oldest forms of poetry. He saw a number of kings, princes and warriors in his dream. The poem is set in the autumn season. In " La Belle Dame" we see a knight that is lonely and escapes to the world of imagination. La Belle Dame Sans Merci has an ethereal appearance "Faerie's child","light footed," surely she is not human but apart of the supernatural. She could attract the knight’s heart and impress him easily. The fairy lady “lulls” the knight to sleep like a baby in her cave, and he starts to dream something. 2017 2018 2019. “La Belle Dame,” a compact ballad, is wound as tightly as a fuse. Ans. During the time he wrote the ballad, his brother died of tuberculosis; an ailment that swept over many members of his family, including him. (The Israelites were trying to find the Promised Land, whichwould flow with “milk and honey.”), The fairy lady tells the knight that she loves him, but she says it “in language strange.”, He does not say what language it is, or how he is able to understand her. The knight consoled her and caressed her. Ans. The shortening of the fourth line in each stanza of Keats' poem makes the stanza seem a self-contained unit, gives the ballad a deliberate and slow movement, and is pleasing to the ear. 4. Woe betide! La Belle Dame Sans Merci Quotes | Shmoop JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. He sees pale kings, princes and warriors who are tormented by the indifference of the lady. That was a withered place where the knight was loitering. The chill has withered the sedge from the lake and no birds are singing. And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is … He looked warn out, and woe-begone. Ans. There are many signs provided by the poet that show us that the knight was suffering. Keats uses the so-called ballad stanza, a quatrain in alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter lines. What are the “fairy-tale” elements in the poem (words, themes, emotions) and how do they relate to other poems you have read? 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' is about a knight who is not named and about a woman who seems in-human from another land. The lady took the knight to the elfin grot. 10. The poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci written by John Keats is a conversation (in verse) between the poet and a knight who fell in love with a lady but she left him. We get the idea that the knight decks out the maiden with flowers. The knight made a flower wreath, or “garland,” for the lady, along with flower “bracelets.” The “fragrant zone” is a belt made of flowers. We think that this is the response Keats intended. The knight wakes up from the dream alone and cold on the side of a hill. Again, her eyes are described as “wild.”. The rose like colour was fading from his cheeks and he was very much tensed and worried about something, and that could be seen in his forehead. John Keats poem read by Ben Whishaw.. featured in the film Bright Star and also available on the Bright Star soundtrack. Ans. “Woe betide!” is an archaic exclamation used to express extreme grief or suffering. Ans. He interrupts himself with a dash and exclaims “Ah! My comic-book adaptation of the poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" by John Keats (1819). Ans. [H. Buxton Forman (1900-01) 3:22-25] 3. Chapter 6 Gender and Imagination in “Lamia” and “La Belle Dame sans Merci”: John Keats R The female demons of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” and “Lamia” resist the schemas that attempt to contain them, and actively undo the conclusions that the poems present. The lady is “look[ing]” at the knight while “lov[ing]” and “moan[ing],” so we think that they two are having physical relations. Keats was inspired by the principle of beauty. The reader sees that the knight is depressed and lonely from his surroundings. However the knight sees a dream in which earlier victims of the lady warn him that he has been bewitched by the lady who is devoid of any pity. She was so beautiful that one could easily guess her as fairy’s child. Ultimately, as a Romantic poet, Keats was fascinated by nature’s beauty and believed ideal beauty to exist on earth. Alternatively, the association could be with the slavery from which the Israelites had just been freed. Keats’s life and conflicts, his love for his neighbor Fanny Brawne, and his awareness of impending death are written like code into the … She had long hair, was graceful, and had “wild” eyes. The knight describes the dream he had: he saw “kings,” “princes,” and “warriors,” and they were all “death pale.” Infact, he repeats the word “pale” three times in two lines. Because even the memory of the dream is horrible as he repeats it to the unnamed speaker. He started hanging out with her, making flower garlands for her, letting her ride on his horse, and generally flirting like knights do. Ans. Sweet, thought the knight. 3. Alternative English Guide book –class 12 AHSEC, BUY NOW FROM AMAZON: https://amzn.to/2X84B7A, BUY NOW FROM AMAZON: https://amzn.to/3hR4fuh. The knight was taken by her beauty. “Manna” is the food that the Jewish scriptures say that the Israelites ate when they were wandering around the desert after Moses freed them from slavery in Egypt. What did the lady give him in return? This site requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books or journals. The imagery splayed across John Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” denotes to the reader a sensory experience that invites the reader to fully place themselves in the mind of the speaker. The fairy lady takes the knight to her “elfin grot.” “Elfin” just means having to do with elves, as any Tolkien fans probably figured. The knight made a flower wreath, or “garland,” for the lady, along with flower “bracelets.” The “fragrant zone” is a belt made of flowers. He interrupts himself with a dash and exclaims “Ah! He was looking all pale. Ans. Once they are back at her fairy cave, she cries and sighs loudly. The poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” is a ballad. But she was a lady without mercy who vanished without fulfilling the promise of love. Instead, Romanticism's outlook incorporated nature, the individual, alter… She had wild eyes which were speaking the language of love. (We are not sure what “wild’ eyes would look like, but apparently, the knight thought it was attractive.). His work “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” is an imaginative masterpiece written in 1819, which was near his death in 1821. "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" deals with supernatural elements. If we answer the first question in the affirmative, at the very least, we emerge with a sense of demonized female identity, which is a strategy of debasing the women through nomenclature. Chapter 6 Gender and Imagination in “Lamia” and “La Belle Dame sans Merci”: John Keats 125, Chapter 1 Wordsworth, Keats, and the Possibility of the Female Voice 11, Chapter 2 The Problem of Gender in Reason, Feeling, and Sentiment: Mary Wollstonecraft and Edmund Burke 21, Chapter 3 The Problem of Gender in Beauty, Sublimity, and the Imagination: Mary Wollstonecraft and Edmund Burke 47, Chapter 4 Gender and the Poet’s Identity in some of the Lyrical Ballads: Williams Wordsworth 73, Chapter 5 Gender and History in The Prelude: Williams Wordsworth 99, Real and Imagined Women in British Romanticism, Studies in Nineteenth-Century British Literature, https://doi.org/10.3726/978-1-4539-0396-4, Peter Lang International Academic Publishers. THE GIFT OF THE MAGI | SUMMARY | Question-Answers | HS 2ND YEAR | Alternative English | AHSEC, THE SCARECROW | Question-Answers | Class 12 | Alternative English | AHSEC, ON NOT BEING A PHILOSOPHER | Summary | Questions-Answers | AHSEC | HS 2ND YEAR, 1. The procession of “pale” men could be an allusion to the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse that gets described in the Book of Revelation in the Christian bible. 5. It could be read from his face that he had lost the peace of his mind and hence he was unrest. Like other poems of Keats La Belle Dame Sans Merci turns on the contrast or conflict between the ideal and the real - between reality and imagination.The elfin grot represents the ideal world and the fairy's child its denizens. If, however, we seriously engage with the poetic residue, we accept a dual invitation to re-signify subversive female identity and to enlarge the space of the poems. Romantic literature, such as La Belle Dame Sans Merci, was a literary movement that had arisen to counter the theories of the Age of Enlightenment – to bring back imagination, beauty, and art to a culture that had become science-based, theoretical, and realist. Woe betide!” because even the memory of the dream is horrible as he repeats it to the unnamed speaker. It was old-fashioned even when Keats was writing. Where did the knight find himself when he woke up? Romantic writers saw the violence of the French Revolution as proof of the failure of science and reason, and the suffocation of human spirit. We find him loitering about on the shore of the lake. “Fragrant zone” could also be a reference to her lady parts, which would make sense, given where the next two lines go. 9. In her cave, the lady wept her sorrow and sang sweet songs; they made love and at last she lulled the knight asleep. The knight does not say why she is crying, and we never find out – it is left to our imagination. When he woke up, the knight found himself by the cold hill side where no birds sing and no visitation goes. Describe the expressions of the knight. In the lady’s cave, the knight had a strange dream. So now, the “I” is the knight, rather than the original speaker. There is very little description of the lady in "La Belle Dame sans Merci." While modern scholars include John Keats(1795–1821) as one of the British Romantics, he was not associated with the literary movement in his lifetime. 2. Who did the knight see in his dream?2016. Ans. Ans. We can now safely assume that it is late autumn. In his dream he sees pale kings, princes and warriors who are tormented by the indifference of the lady has disappeared and he is forced to loiter aimlessly with the anguish of unrequited love. A ballad is a simple song of several stanzas sung to the same melody. The lady could capture the knight by her beauty, and took him to her elfin grot. The knight has been bewitched by a beautiful lady who had professed her love, and gave him sweet roots, wild honey and manna dew. In ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ Keats shows that, inevitably, beauty is transient when viewed by a mortal being as the mortal will eventually part with the earth’s beauty. She had wild eyes which were speaking the language of love. "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" is in the form of a dialogue between two speakers. Related to this focus on death and horror, Keats wrote the … The sudden separation from the lady whom he had fallen in love with was actually ailing the knight. The knight says that he met a beautiful fairy lady in the fields. Ans: The knight is enraptured by the beauty of a woman who he meets in the wilderness. He thus realizes that his dream was a prediction of things to come. What did the knight make for the lady? is a poem that requires the reader to think and to use his/her imagination. The knight is being addressed at the beginning of the poem. The last two lines of the stanza do more to set the scene: the squirrels have finished filling up their “granary,” or storage of food for the winter, and the crops have already been harvested. Again, her eyes are described as “wild.”The fairy lady “lulls” the knight to sleep like a baby in her cave, and he starts to dream something. The knight becomes enraptured by or totally absorbed in the pleasures of the imagination--the delicious foods, her song, her beauty, her love or favor ("and nothing else saw all day long"). What did the beautiful lady sing for the knight at arms? The people warned the knight with their starving lips that the knight was in the thrall of the beautiful lady without mercy. The lady looked like fairy’s child. After all, the knight does become enslaved to the beautiful fairy lady. In the poem, a medieval knight recounts a fanciful romp in the countryside with a fairy woman— La Belle Dame sans Merci, which means "The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy" in French—that ends in cold horror. Ans. The lady was known as the beautiful lady without mercy. Images are stills taken from the film. Study La Belle Dame Sans Merci flashcards from Megan Evers's Comberton Village College class online, or in Brainscape's iPhone or Android app. All of them were warning the knight that he had fallen in the trap of the beautiful lady who had no mercy. Imagination and creativity abounds in Keats’s celebrated ballad, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”. “Manna” is the food that the Jewish scriptures say that the Israelites ate when they were wandering around the desert after Moses freed them from slavery in Egypt. In this poem the reader can observe many romantic traits. "La Belle Dame sans Merci" is a ballad, a medieval genre revived by the romantic poets. What are the characteristics of Keats’ poetry? Ans. He asks him what is going on, and the knight’s answer takes up the rest of the poem. Or, are the convention, structure, and design of these poems somewhat more expansive than hitherto assumed and thereby somewhat more radical than they have been given credit for? The first is the unnamed speaker who comes across a sick, sad knight and pesters him with questions for the first three stanzas. 7. Ans. Ans. Ans: The opening lines addressed to the knight. She leads him to a cave and lulls him to sleep, saying she loves him. 6. What did the lady feed the knight with? The kings, princes and warriors were looking death-pale. Ans. 3. He tells the original, unnamed speaker, that this is why he is hanging out (“sojourn[ing]” and “loitering”) by himself, even though it is so dismal outside. 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