La Belle Dame Sans Merci Annotations
Title is French- The Language of Love. Title translates to: ‘The Beautiful Woman Without Mercy/Pity.’ The woman in the poem speaks French and that’s why the knight misunderstands her.
The poem has a circular structure, repetition of the first knights’ words at the beginning and end of the poem. The first and last stanzas are almost identical. Lots of lines are repeated throughout.
Title taken from a medieval poem, romanticism celebrated medievalism and its traditions.
Written in the form of a Literary Ballad: Tells the story in a simple way, similar to a song or folk ballad, (embracing traditions).
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
This is the first speaker as he is talking about another knight, asking rhetorical questions.
I
The first and second stanzas contain anxiety and uncertainty of the first speaker and foreshadow the pain and trouble that will come to the second speaker
No birds singing is a metaphor for there being no life around or no life for the knight
‘Ail’ means bringing someone down through pain or trouble. This foreshadows the discomfort the second knight will experience later in the poem.
Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
II
We would think a ‘knight-at-arms’ as a muscular and strong hero. However the hero is portrayed to be ‘haggard’. This is a derogatory term for a woman being used for a man, ‘Haggard old woman’.
Pathetic Fallacy is used to set a dull mood. Binary Opposite: Winter, (when the harvest’s done), is cold in comparison to the sunshine that a knight would bring. This could also be a metaphor for the fact that the knight is food for the woman, so he gives her power.
Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.
Imagery of Nature is used to create a somber mood and tension in the atmosphere: Lilies are associated with funerals and death and fading roses with illness and death but
The poem has a circular structure, repetition of the first knights’ words at the beginning and end of the poem. The first and last stanzas are almost identical. Lots of lines are repeated throughout.
Title taken from a medieval poem, romanticism celebrated medievalism and its traditions.
Written in the form of a Literary Ballad: Tells the story in a simple way, similar to a song or folk ballad, (embracing traditions).
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
This is the first speaker as he is talking about another knight, asking rhetorical questions.
I
The first and second stanzas contain anxiety and uncertainty of the first speaker and foreshadow the pain and trouble that will come to the second speaker
No birds singing is a metaphor for there being no life around or no life for the knight
‘Ail’ means bringing someone down through pain or trouble. This foreshadows the discomfort the second knight will experience later in the poem.
Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
II
We would think a ‘knight-at-arms’ as a muscular and strong hero. However the hero is portrayed to be ‘haggard’. This is a derogatory term for a woman being used for a man, ‘Haggard old woman’.
Pathetic Fallacy is used to set a dull mood. Binary Opposite: Winter, (when the harvest’s done), is cold in comparison to the sunshine that a knight would bring. This could also be a metaphor for the fact that the knight is food for the woman, so he gives her power.
Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.
Imagery of Nature is used to create a somber mood and tension in the atmosphere: Lilies are associated with funerals and death and fading roses with illness and death but