Keats - La belle dame sens merci

Background

- Before this poem was written, Keats' brother had been duped into loving a fake woman by a friends of his- Keats' whole family died of tuberculosis- Keats also exhibited dear in his own love relationships- The title is an allusion to a much earlier work of literature- It is very medieval and the knight seems to have wandered into someone else's fairytale- the poem is a form of dialogue between two speakers, the first which is not named and the knight- It is also possible that the knight is just a figment of the first speakers imagination

Themes

Love, corruption, and death- Keats deals with the love between a human male and a superhuman female, which has deadly undertones- the woman is viewed as a deamon muse, who seduces the knight and fatally weekends him in the act of love- Corruption follows seduction in this poem, and it is not so much love we see as obsession- This is another of Keats' poems to feature the human being in a strange transitional state

Abandonment - It is about being abandoned by the one you love, even when you are at deaths door- she is merciless and the knights solitude becomes the framing image of the poem

Themes

The supernatural- it is part folk ballad, part romance, and part fairytale- her "wild eyes" "elfin grot" "strange language" and "fairy's song" all hint toward the supernatural

Versions of reality- what is real and what is fantasy in this poem?

Symbols

Flowers- The lily represents the paleness of the knight- the Knight's rose is fading and withering- garlands for the womanSeasons and cycles- Begins in what seems to be late autumn or early winterPaleness- repeated throughout the poemDreams and sleepDew and water

Quotes

"O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering?""and no birds sing""O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, so haggard and woe-begone?""The harvest's done""I see a lily on thy brow, with anguish moist and fever dew, and on thy cheeks a fading rose, fast withereth too""A faery's child""her eyes were wild""and nothing else saw all day long, for sidelong would she bend and sing a faery's song""honey wild and mana-dew""in language strange she said i love thee true""she lulled me asleep, and there I dreamed -Ah! Woe betide! - the latest dream I ever dreamt on the cold hill side""I saw pale king and princes too, pale warriors, death pale were they all; they cried la belle dam sens merci thee hath in thrall!""starved lips""gaped wide""i awoke and found me here, on the cold hill's side""and this is why i sojourn here, alone and palely loitering, though the sedge has withered from the lake, and no birds sing"