1. La belle dame sans merci. A ballad
“The beautiful lady without mercy”
John Keats –

2. What is it about?
Keats's life and his conflicts, his love for his neighbour Fanny Brawne and his awareness of impending death are written like code into the predicament of a dying medieval knight, the poems principle character
This poem was written in oral form; people used to memorise it and perform it rather than read it, telling a story of love.
There are many ambiguous interpretations – it’s read as the story of a seductive and treacherous woman who tempts men away from the real world and then leaves them, their lives blighted and dreams un-fulfilled
Some see it as the wasting power of sexual love, while others see the poet’s infatuation with his muse
Theme of betrayal – love will never last
Feminist interpretation – fatal woman conventionally tempts man with her beauty and ultimately causes his destruction
CRITICAL VIEW – Author of ‘Keats’ Kingdom’ – hints at the many interpretations of the poem
“For all the beguiling simplicity of this literary ballad, it is one of the most difficult of Keats’s poems to explain, and open to many interpretations. It has been alternately suggested, for example, that it is about the wasting power of sexual love and/or the poets infatuation with his muse.”

3. General Context – Written in spring 1819, published 1820
Keats is one of England’s most celebrated poets
Writing at the end of the Romantic period
REMINDER – Key themes of cultivated individualism, reverence for the natural world, physical and emotional passion, an interest in the mystic and the supernatural.
Romantics set themselves in opposition to order and rationality of classical artistic precepts to embrace freedom and revolution in their arts and policies
Writers felt the Enlightenment era thinkers missed what it meant to be human
Reoccuring evidence of Romantic influence in poem – obsession with beauty and love, jilted angst – ridden speaker
Symbolic use of flowers
Fairytale themes
Keats used a medieval tail to prove to critics that he, a non-educated man, could discuss the classics and therefore write good poetry

4. Keats’s life – Many feel the Knight & lady allude to his & Fanny Brawne’s relationship
Keats’s neighbour, whom was married with children
Keats and Fanny had an affair, his love letters to her she kept and showed her children. These letters were later celebrated as the most beautiful ever written
First met when his brother, Tom, was dying of Tuberculosis
Her presence as his neighbour became intoxicating for Keats
From April 1819 onwards, their romance blossomed (poem written in 1819)
Keats died at 25, of Tuberculosis
Some readers see the poem as Keats’s personal rebellion against the pains of love. Keats resented the pains, e.g. loss of freedom, that came with falling in love

5. General form & structure points
Ballad form – has its romantic pre-cursors e.g. Wordsworth + Colderidge ‘Lyrical ballads’ was Keats’s principle reference.
Set out in quatrains, with a rhyme scheme of ABCB throughout.
Stress pattern/structure is quatrains alternating in Iambic Tetrameter and Trimeter (Trimeter – 3 anapests, which is 2 stressed beats followed by an unstressed beat).
Two speakers: For the first three stanza’s the speaker is unnamed, and then after this the ‘knight’ is the speaker. However, some argue that there is only one speaker, and that the knight is a figment of his imagination due to the lack of change in writing style. After all, what happens to him is incredible, and the dream sequence at the end emphasizes the possibility of illusion. If that's the case, the knight would never have spoken, and it would have been the same speaker for the entire poem.

6. The Poem…
First 3 stanza’s – speaker unnamed
Ballad – Alternating lines of 4 and 3 stresses in each line.
Consonance of ‘L’ sound makes line sound musical, as well as creating an internal rhyme from line 1 ‘ail thee’
Sedge - grass-like plant that grows in marshy, wet grounds like lakes
I O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake, And no birds sing. II 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.
Adjective ‘withered’ has implications of Autumn season, one associated with fallen leaves and so old age and imminent death
Lake – symbolic/foreshadows events to come. This body of water does not float, so the water stagnates and grow algae & pond scum
Absence of the bird creates an ominous tone – accentuates desolate nature of the landscape
‘Harvest’ suggests planting, fertility, and the cycle of life – the process will repeat itself next year
If the sedge is dead the birds are gone, and all the crops have been harvested, does this mean the knight and the lady are the only things left in the landscape?
What tone does this create?
Semantic field of death + paleness introduced

7. Symbolic use of flowers reinforces poems Romantic style
Lilies - associated with death in Western culture, so the lilies on the knight’s forehead doesn’t bode well for him. This metaphor regards death, and the idea that the relationship is morbid and sickly (pale).
III
I see lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too. IV
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful – a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
Rose associated with love in western world -The paleness of the rose reflect s both the knight’s pale complexion and the loss of love. It is a metaphor for the ending of a romantic relationship, and therefore represents the fading love affair.
Shift in narration – the speaker is now the knight.
Offers more detail about the female faery addressee than the first speaker
Makes the poem about personal interactions with love, rather than the general concept of it
Elements of fairy-tale/supernatural shows how the poem is Romantic
Caesura - This creates pause and a slower deliberation ; also makes the poem and his ideas more disjointed and unbalanced.

8. The covering of her in flowers- bracelets etc, could represent the restrictive nature of love Keats resented
V I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone, She looked at me as she did love, And she made sweet moan. VI I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend, and sing A faery’s song.
This suggests the presence of love/ lust for the woman regarding the ‘knight’; it suggest he could be totally in love with the woman.
This could also be a euphemism for her anatomical zone below this ‘belt’ of flowers.
Each stanza’s fourth line is shortened to make it slow and more pleasing to the ear. It also makes each stanza seem like a self-contained unit, which creates emphasis when spoken.
The simplicity of language throughout the poem makes it appeal to less educated people

9. LINK – S3 – un-named speaker notices the knight sweating from ‘fever dew’
Dew is repeated here in describing the female addressee – she gave him the fever. This starts to unveil the darkness behind her erotic, fairy façade.
‘Manna’ is the heavenly food from Jewish scriptures, that which the Israelites ate in the wilderness after they escaped slavery.
VII She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna-dew, And sure in language strange she said – ‘I love thee true’ VIII She took me to her elfin grot, And there she wept and sighed full sore, And there I shut her wild wild eyes, With kisses four.
BUT… why is the manna in liquid form? This is linked to the medieval romantic association with women and water the symbolism being – men who mess around with women tend to get soggy and wet in literature.

10. IX And there she lulled me asleep And there I dreamed – Ah. Woe betide
IX And there she lulled me asleep And there I dreamed – Ah! Woe betide! The latest dream I ever dreamt On the cold hill side X I saw pale kings, and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried – ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci Thee hath in thrall!’
"lulled" is such a sleepy-sounding word that it's almost onomatopoeia
 OR - It can indeed mean to calm someone's fears or suspicions by deception.
"dream" gets repeated three times in two lines, raising questions about consciousness and the nature of reality,
Biblical reference – 4 horseman of the apocalypse. Keats’s attempt at proving himself well read
A haunting ominous effect is created through Keats’ formal features, such as this regular mundane rhythm, of the traditional ballad.
Paleness is now explicitly associated with death
Harsh repetition and consonance of the ‘th’ sound is what ends the knights dream – after having cried their warning, he wakes up

11. XI I saw their starved lips in the gloam, With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke and found me here, On the cold hill’s side XII And this is why I sojourn here Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is withered from the lake, And no birds sing.
The knight is at the mercy of his helpless affections (or lust?) towards this woman. When she withdraws her love, the heat vanishes, hence the knight feels cold and the world seems frigid.
Gloam – twilight or dusk, sounds very similar to ‘gloom’ when read
CYCLICAL STRUCTURE – poem ends how it started, giving the theme of never-ending pain, reiterating the harsh bleak landscape and emphasising the knight’s ‘emptiness’
Keats interprets strongly within the patriarchal context of the time - It is the knight who tells the story, who describes the lady for us and his questioner. The knight and the kings, princes and warriors who appear in his dream, belong to the masculine world of strife and action, government and politics