28th March 2015
GCSE English: 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' Analysis
Nibble Clothing
The newest clothing line that makes hard work and intelligence fashionable. At Nibble Clothing we believe that you should be able to wear clothes that embrace your inner nerd whilst still looking enviable out and about. Come check us out, new designs coming soon! |
Poet and context
Written around 1819; Keats was one of the Romantic poets and this poem has many features of that genre. He had a short life and at the time of writing was in love with Fanny Brawne and aware that he didn’t have long to live. The title of the poem is taken from French lyrical poem and means “The beautiful lady without pity”.
Content
The poem takes the form of a conversation between an unnamed person and a knight, in a dreary spot, who is clearly unwell and in distress. Most of the poem consists of his tale, of meeting a beautiful woman who has, it seems, enchanted him, so that he lingers in the depressing place alone. At first it seems a tale of a traditional courtship (“made a garland for her head”, “set her on my pacing steed”) but more unsettling references begin to creep in.
Mood/tone
Poem is set in a generic Medieval past of knights and “pale warriors”, so it has an archaic tone. The voice of the knight conveys fascination, strangeness, mystery, enchantment, but ultimately horror, desolation and despair.
Themes
Love/romance and obsession (contrast other forms eg Sonnet 116); women and femininity; supernatural – man cannot impose normal human rules on (or survive in) the realms of fantasy; isolation/loss/abandonment (H&S)
Form and structure
A ballad, a poem telling a story in a song-like structure. Hence the short stanzas with regular pattern and rhyming of 2nd and 4th line; the short final line in each stanza lends emphasis. The overall structure is cyclical or a ring composition, with the first stanza being virtually repeated in the last. Language features such as repetition are also typical of the ballad form.
Language
Used powerfully to create a sense of place and atmosphere.
Desolation of setting evoked through repetition of “withered” and negative statement “no birds sing”. Also, the repetition of “cold hill side”.
Semantic field of nature used throughout, firstly to depict place as dreary; then he meets the lady “in the meads”; then as metaphor for knight’s sickly and distracted air “lily on thy brow”, “fading rose”; the lady’s enchantment is achieved through “honey wild” “roots of relish sweet” (alliteration). IRONIC! because her influence is anything but natural.
Also much lexis emphasising the supernatural aspects of the lady: “faery’s child/faery’s song”, “elfin grot”, the repetition of “wild, wild eyes”.
Imagery of horror and death “starved lips in the gloam”, “horrid warning gaped wide”. Nightmarish.
Written around 1819; Keats was one of the Romantic poets and this poem has many features of that genre. He had a short life and at the time of writing was in love with Fanny Brawne and aware that he didn’t have long to live. The title of the poem is taken from French lyrical poem and means “The beautiful lady without pity”.
Content
The poem takes the form of a conversation between an unnamed person and a knight, in a dreary spot, who is clearly unwell and in distress. Most of the poem consists of his tale, of meeting a beautiful woman who has, it seems, enchanted him, so that he lingers in the depressing place alone. At first it seems a tale of a traditional courtship (“made a garland for her head”, “set her on my pacing steed”) but more unsettling references begin to creep in.
Mood/tone
Poem is set in a generic Medieval past of knights and “pale warriors”, so it has an archaic tone. The voice of the knight conveys fascination, strangeness, mystery, enchantment, but ultimately horror, desolation and despair.
Themes
Love/romance and obsession (contrast other forms eg Sonnet 116); women and femininity; supernatural – man cannot impose normal human rules on (or survive in) the realms of fantasy; isolation/loss/abandonment (H&S)
Form and structure
A ballad, a poem telling a story in a song-like structure. Hence the short stanzas with regular pattern and rhyming of 2nd and 4th line; the short final line in each stanza lends emphasis. The overall structure is cyclical or a ring composition, with the first stanza being virtually repeated in the last. Language features such as repetition are also typical of the ballad form.
Language
Used powerfully to create a sense of place and atmosphere.
Desolation of setting evoked through repetition of “withered” and negative statement “no birds sing”. Also, the repetition of “cold hill side”.
Semantic field of nature used throughout, firstly to depict place as dreary; then he meets the lady “in the meads”; then as metaphor for knight’s sickly and distracted air “lily on thy brow”, “fading rose”; the lady’s enchantment is achieved through “honey wild” “roots of relish sweet” (alliteration). IRONIC! because her influence is anything but natural.
Also much lexis emphasising the supernatural aspects of the lady: “faery’s child/faery’s song”, “elfin grot”, the repetition of “wild, wild eyes”.
Imagery of horror and death “starved lips in the gloam”, “horrid warning gaped wide”. Nightmarish.
Share this:
HTML Comment Box is loading comments...