La Belle Dame sans Merci Flashcards

Ballad Form

ballads usually depict perfect love but this one depicts heartbreak + destructive love

Poem is an extended metaphor

for dangers of distraction and infatuation.

Near perfect rhymes (only even lines)

honours song and dance purpose of ballad - perhaps shows dangers of distraction because he's enjoying himself rather than being dutiful + also shows how he believes this love is perfect

Internal rhyme of 'ail thee' and 'palely'

makes sound like drawn out cries - showing knight's emotional state and how his neglectfulness is harming people.

semantic field of death of 'pale...pale...pale'

shows how forgetting your duty can hurt others - character does easy thing and stays instead of doing hard thing and going/ perhaps the destructiveness of love - woman killed men with her love

metaphor of 'gloam'

time immediately after sunset -metaphor for freshly dead bodies and how he is coming to end of life because of her

Biblical illusion of 12 stanzas

12 disciples - completeness even though he's not complete

cyclical structure

they're still here/cycle of her duping men over and over/ knight ended up where he started at beginning of poem - ineffectual nature of love

abrupt ending + monosyllables of 'and no birds sing'

shows that death and beauty are bound together and is inseparable - also reminiscent of lady's faerie song

pathetic fallacy of 'sedge has withered from the lake'

bleak imagery mimics knight's state

flower imagery of 'lily....dew...rose'

rose is beautiful but has thorns - metaphor for dangerous lady. Lily also represents death

switch between knight being in control 'I' and him losing it

shows how she's begun to bewitch him and his loss of control - shows how dangerous romance can be. Also he says 'I shut her eyes' - showing how he thinks that he is in control but isn't

Biblical illusion of 'manna'

shows how perfect everything is, implying that it is too perfect to be real

melancholic setting of 'no birds sing' and 'the harvest's done'

shows lack of knight's vitality

Omniscient narrator

bleakness of real world (knight's description) vs knight's fantastical memories

repetition of 'wild'

shows how she's bewitched him/ he's become infatuated with her/

lexical choice of 'lulled'

gentle, soothing, motherly + entrancing

harsh contrast of next two stanzas with 'lulled'

harsh awakening from illusion of perfection