Belle Video Read a Story Sing Arhyme
A Verse form by John Keats (1795-1821)
A Study Guide
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Study Guide Written by Michael J. Cummings ... � 2009
Type of Work and Year of Publication
....... "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" is a literary carol, a poem that imitates a folk ballad. A folk ballad tells a story on a theme pop with the mutual people of a particular culture or place. More often than not of unknown authorship, a folk ballad passes by word of mouth from one generation to the next. One of its key characteristics is a cadence that makes it easy to
prepare to music and sing.
....... A literary ballad has a known writer who composes the verse form with careful deliberation according to sophisticated conventions. Like the folk ballad, it tells a story with a popular theme. However, accomplished nineteenth-century romantic poets such as Keats couched literary ballads in more elegant language than that of typical folk ballads. �La Belle Matriarch Sans Merci" is intended to be read, non sung.
....... Keats completed the poem in April 1819. Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), a critic and poet, published a revised version of the poem in his literary periodical, The Indicator, in 1820. The original version is generally regarded as superior to the altered version.
The Title
....... John Keats based the championship of his literary ballad on the title of a long French poem with a dissimilar story. The championship of the latter poem, written in 1424 by Alain Chartier (1392-1433), is �La Belle Dame sans mercy." (Notice the different spelling of the concluding word.) Every bit a feminine noun, the French word merci means pity or mercy. As a masculine substantive, it ways thanks. The translation of the title is �The Cute Woman Without Mercy."
Setting
....... The time is late fall. The place is England during the Age of Chivalry. A lovesick knight tells an unidentified person about a beautiful �faery'south child" he met in a meadow.
Themes
Estimation one: Unrequited Dearest
....... Later on telling the knight she loves him, the beautiful lady lulls him to slumber and abandons him. Equally he sits alone on a cold hillside, his unrequited love makes him physically ill. He lacks the free energy and will to motility on. All he can exercise is brood.
Estimation 2: Impossible Dearest
....... Line 30 of the poem says, "And there she wept and sighed full sore." The suggestion here is that the lady does care for the knight merely realizes she must leave him considering she is a fairy and he is a human. Two such beings cannot take a life together. This theme can use to any man and adult female who honey each other but cannot marry because of cultural, religious, or social barriers or any other impediment.
....... Be enlightened that lines 37-44 bring into question the validity of this interpretation. Nonetheless, information technology may well be that the fairy lady, depressed and lone in her elfin grot (line 29) became enamored of kings, princes, and other knights in previous decades or centuries.
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Interpretation 3: Terminal Illness
....... In the summer of 1818, Keats began exhibiting symptoms of tuberculosis, a affliction that had already infected his younger brother, Tom, who died in December of that year. Exactly when Keats became aware that he was suffering from a killer disease is uncertain. But, equally an observer of his brother's symptoms and equally a trained apothecary who had worked in hospitals, Keats must take suspected that his own symptoms were an ominous sign. Consequently, when he wrote �La Belle Dame Sans Merci" in the spring of 1819, he might have intended the beautiful adult female as a symbol for the life, which was slowly slipping away from him. During this fourth dimension, he must have felt like the knight sitting on the common cold hill�pale, feverish, and alone. He lasted less than 2 more years, dying in February 1821.
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Honor-Winning Moving picture Near Keats and Fanny Brawne
(Rated PG)
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.......The motion-picture show, set during his final several years, focuses on his playful friendship with and evolving beloved for Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), the independent-minded young woman who lived side by side door in Hampstead Village and was, in her own way, an creative spirit. Completing an ineffably fraught constellation--not exactly a romantic triangle--is Keats'south host Charles Armitage Brown (Paul Schneider), who loves, esteems, and regards Keats with both pride and green-eyed, and engages in an unstated rivalry for Fanny. All three performances are superb, with Whishaw adding to his gallery of artist figures (the olfactorily obsessed murderer in Perfume, i of the Bob Dylans in I'grand Not There), and Cornish and Schneider taking top acting honors for 2009. As in Campion's The Piano, others are party to the primal story, and they have identities, personalities, and claims to intelligence and understanding that we appreciate without having it announced in dialogue. Kerry Flim-flam (redheaded wild girl of Campion'due south An Angel at My Tabular array nearly two decades agone) evokes Fanny's mother with a few brushstrokes, and Fanny'southward young sister and brother are watchful presences and de facto co-conspirators in the courtship. In addition, Vivid Star is the rare menstruation pic to convey--without being insistent--what it was like to exist alive in another era, the nature of houses and rooms and how people occupied them, the way windows linked spaces and enlarged people's lives and experiences, how fires warmed as the milky English language sunlight did not. And e'er there is an aliveness to place and atmospheric condition, the creak of boardwalk underfoot and the wind rustling the reeds equally lovers walk through a wetland. Poesy grows from such things; at least, Jane Campion'south does. --Richard T. Jameson
Rhyme Scheme and Meter
....... The rhyme scheme of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" is abcb�that is, the second and fourth lines of each stanza rhyme.
....... In each stanza, the meter of the starting time three lines is iambic tetrameter. In this format, a line contains four anxiety (four pairs of syllables), with the stress falling on the get-go syllable in each pair. The first ii lines of the verse form demonstrate this metric pattern.
.......one..............2..................iii......,,,,.........4The meter of the final line of each stanza is usually in iambic dimeter: In this format, a line contains two anxiety (ii pairs of syllables), with the stress falling on the first syllable in each pair. The last line of the first stanza demonstrates this pattern.
O WHAT ..|..can. AIL ..|..thee. KNIGHT ..|..at. ARMS......1.................2...............three............4
A LONE ..|..and. Stake ..|..ly. LOIT ..|.. er . ING
.....i................2In improver, the concluding line of some stanzas combines an anapestic foot with an iambic foot, every bit in line 8:
and NO ..|..birds SING
........i.....................2Narration
and the HAR ..|..belong's DONE
....... The poem is a dialogue between an unidentified person and a knight. The old asks the latter why he looks so pale and feverish. The latter responds with his story about the beautiful fairy adult female.
Tone
....... The mood of the poem is somber and sorrowful. Keats maintains information technology with such adjectives as woebegone, sighed, gloam, and lonely. In addition, he sets the poem in belatedly fall so that nature�the withering sedge, the cold, and the absence of birdsong�reflects the mood of the knight.
Figures of Speech
....... Following are examples of figures of speech in the verse form:
A fifty one and pale l y l oitering (line ii): ingemination..
lily on thy brow (line nine): metaphor comparing the knight's paleness to the hue of a lily.
And on thy cheeks a fading rose (line 11): metaphor comparing the color of his cheeks to the color of a rose.
F ull beauti f ul, a f aery's child (line 14): alliteration.
r oots of r elish, s ighed full southward ore (line 25): alliteration.
And at that place . . . (lines xxx, 31, 33, 34): anaphora.
I saw p ale Kings, and P rinces too / P ale warriors, death p ale were they all (lines 37-39): alliteration.
By John Keats
Original 1819 Version
With Notes
O what tin ail thee, knight at arms,
Lone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither�d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
sedge : Found with pointed leaves and tiny flowers.
2
O what can ail thee, knight at arms! v
So haggard and and then woebegone ?
The squirrel�s granary is total,
And the harvest�s done.
woebegone : Woeful, mournful, sorrowful.
3
I see a lily on thy forehead
With anguish moist and fever dew, 10
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
lily . on thy brow : Pale brow.
cheeks a fading rose : The cheeks are losing their color.
four
"I met a lady in the meads ,
Full beautiful�a faery�south child,
Her hair was long, her pes was low-cal, xv
And her eyes were wild.
meads : Meadows.
five
"I fabricated a garland for her caput,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone ;
She await�d at me every bit she did love,
And fabricated sugariness moan. 20
fragrant zone : Sash for the waist.
6
"I set her on my pacing steed,
And zero else saw all solar day long,
For sidelong would she curve, and sing
A faery�s song.
vii
"She found me roots of relish sweet, 25
And dear wild, and manna dew ,
And sure in linguistic communication strange she said�
�I honey thee truthful."
manna dew : Edible product of diverse kinds of plants.
8
"She took me to her elfin grot ,
And there she wept, and sigh�d full sore, thirty
And in that location I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
grot : Cave.
9
"And there she lull�d me asleep,
And there I dream�d�Ah! woe betide !
The latest dream I ever dream�d 35
On the cold hill�s side.
betide : is about to happen
10
"I saw pale kings and princes as well,
Stake warriors, decease-stake were they all;
They cried��La Belle Dame sans Merci
Thee hath in thrall! " xl
Thee hath in thrall : Inverted word order. The meaning is has yous in thrall. Some texts print this line equally Hath thee in thrall.
11
"I saw their starved lips in the gloam ,
With horrid warning gap�d broad,
And I awoke and found me hither,
On the cold hill�s side.
gloam : Twilight, sunset.
12
"And this is why I sojourn here, 45
Lone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither�d from the lake,
And no birds sing."
Study Questions and Writing Topics
- Write another stanza (or two) in which you take the part of the questioner and respond to the knight'south story.
- Reread lines 27 and 28, then reply this question. If the lady speaks a strange linguistic communication, how does the knight know what she said?
- Has a disappointment of any kind always made you feel similar the knight? If so, write a curt poem near your experience.
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