Class Blog

Sir Frank Dicksee subtly captures Keates entire poem in one scene that emphasizes the troubling gender reversal that bothers the knight immensely. When the knight begins to recount is day with the lady, the meter breaks: “I met a lady in the meads / Full beautiful, a fairy’s child; / Her hair was long, her foot was light, / And her eyes were wild” (l. 13-16). There are two traditional impulses at work in these lines. The first is how the speaker wants to catalogue the lady’s graces, a hallmark of the Petrarchan sonnet tradition extended out of its original form.  The second is the rhyme scheme, abcb, which is a ballad rhyme typically used for joyful or love poems. However, the meter is broken at the fourth line of each stanza from melodic quatrameter to jarring dimeter. In these stanzas there is a clear tension for the speaker between being bewitched by the lovely lady and trying to wake himself up from her spell. In the portrait as well, the movement is driven and controlled by La Belle Dame: the horse she rides is plausibly poised to move forward, and her hands on the bridle and saddle follow that line which wants to move away from the knight. The knight’s knees are bent as if he is losing his drive to follow her, and he is losing his grip on the horse. It is as if the painter has captured the moment of realization between the third and fourth lines where he tries to shake himself from her spell, losing his balance in the process and extending his arms. He is not in control of the momentum of the painting or the poem, and this is unsettling to him as the noble man who typically has control. 

The knight is enthralled by La Belle Dame’s gaze, and getting closer to the lover’s eyes is important. But first we must reexamine the poem when the knight has a sublime vision of his ruin: “I saw pale kings, and princes too, / Pale warriors – death-pale they all – / Who cried: ‘La belle dame sans merci / Hath thee in thrall!” (l. 37-40). The meter break keeps with the established pattern, setting up a community of men urging him to wake up so he won’t be another victim of this woman’s seductions. In the painting, the knight doesn’t quite meet her eyes, instead gazing at the flower crown which has three small flowers drifting down toward him. The knight mentions that he sees three pale men who urge him to wake up, and his eyeline toward these blossoms could be the artist gesturing toward this sublime awakening. Moreover, either he has extended his hand toward another grove of flowers, or they grow toward him. In either viewing, these flowers could be the other male victims who foreshadow his fate if he remains entranced. 

This poem is concerned with the gendered role of the casual initiation of sex as valorized for men and demonized for women. Considering that the Pre-Raphaelites were deeply interested in returning to the Renaissance paradigm of art, it would be interesting to consider this painting alongside Caravaggio’s “Narcissus.” La Belle Dame in Dicksee’s painting and Caravaggio’s Narcissus have similar posture, leaning over the object of their desire, though La Belle Dame is in the dominant position. This is likely the place the knight hoped to put himself in, and is embarrassed by the reversal which literally puts him face to face with his own hypocrisy and vanity – ultimately the cause of ruin for both men.  

Left: “Narcissus” by Caravaggio

Right: “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” by Sir Frank Dicksee

Dear readers, 

John Keats REALLY loves love…and death. They go hand in hand with each other, of course. In his poem “La Belle Dame sans Merci”, Keats presents a classic: A knight is seduced by a fairy because she’s beautiful and falls in love with her. Aw. Then the knight dies. Yikes. Through a dialogue format and a number of other poetic devices, Keats portrays this tragic romance which not only takes on a dark twist but also raises questions over love.

Composed of 12 quatrains, the poem is moved along by iambic tetrameter which is in the first 3 lines of each stanza. Thus, the repeating tetrameter both stresses words and sets up a cadence resembling a ballad of music. Aiding this, we also have end-stopped lines in the form of repeating commas, exclamation marks, question marks, periods, and semicolons. Having established the rhyme scheme, readers, let’s move onto the tone. In the first stanza of the poem, we read: “O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake, And no birds sing.” (1-4) Here, we get a sense that the knight in question is miserable and the speaker wonders why he suffers in his described paleness and loneliness. After the speaker repeats this question “O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms” in line 5, the knight responds and explains how he came upon a fairy who was “Full beautiful—a faery’s child, Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.” (14-16) This detailed fixation on the fairy’s beauty, specifically body parts, is further emphasized by the consonance of “f” and “w” and “l”. Readers, is it possible that this section also serves to display the male eye of desire based on the focus on physical beauty and further evidence in the poem.

For one, notice how further in the poem that the knight reveals: “ I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long,..” (21-22). This is a sexual innuendo implying that the knight had sex with the fairy “all day long.” So far, the knight is infatuated with the fairy purely based on how she pleasures his eye and his body. Furthermore, the knights recalls how “sure in language strange she said— ‘I love thee true’. ” (27-28) “Sure in a language strange”?? If the fairy is speaking in a language “strange”, how does the knight understand exactly what she’s saying? Is this meant as love is a universal translator or that the knight is completely disillusioned with his obsession over the physicality of this fairy who can apparently have sex all day?

Another device I noticed was what I thought were allusions to the femme fatale. The first red flag is when the knight characterizes the fairy to have “wild” eyes. Wild beings that are beautiful are often deadly, is my thought. In addition, after the sex part, the knight explains that the fairy “found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna-dew,..” (25-26) and she “lulled me asleep” (33) in “her Elfin grot” (29). Following the knight falling asleep, he dreamed of “pale” (37-38) kings, princes, and warriors who cry “ ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci Thee hath in thrall!’ ” (39-40) Hmmm, knight conveniently falls asleep after having sex all day and then being fed roots he somehow knows the names of… Not to mention the dream of the “pale” men who warn the knight that the fairy has him in “thrall”. The repetition of pale and the unionized warning very clearly indicates that the men are ghosts who were victims of the fairy. So now the question remains: Did the fairy kill the night with energy-sucking sex like a succubus or did she poison him with the roots? Either way, I think Keats is warning us… Love can be fatal. It can even end up killing you. 

Sincerely, Alucard

“Christabel” begins with the night castle that belongs to the Baron. The castle is conventionally a male-governed space, a fortress, symbolizing military success (“The gate that was ironed within and without, / Where an army in battle-array had marched out” (120-121)) and safety (“Saying that she should command / The service of Sir Leoline, / And straight be convoyed, free from thrall, / Back to her noble father’s hall” (102-105)). But on the other hand, the castle, being a frequently used trope in gothic literature, also represents history (especially family history), an enclosed space with restrictions. Part I of “Christabel” takes place at night and is a completely female-dominated narrative. All of the characters are female, including the ghost of Christabel’s mother and the mastiff. Being a male-owned property, the castle acts as a way of repression for women. Christabel can only seek her freedom at night, outside the castle. After what’s possibly a sexual dream about her “betrothed knight” (28), that made her “moan and leap” (29), Christabel went to the woods to pray for his health. The woods have the connotation of promiscuity and fertility. The outside becomes a symbol for the liberation of desires, which the indoors (the castle) represses. This liberation of sexual desires invites a supernatural encounter with Geraldine.

Christabel’s room is portrayed as a hidden place, deep in the castle, where the ghost of her mother roams. The poem dedicates 7 stanzas to their journey from the woods to Christabel’s room. They had to cross the moat, the gate, the court, pass the mastiff’s kennel, the hall, go up the stairs and past the Baron’s room. And they end up in a room where “not a moonbeam enters” (168), in which “The lamp with twofold silver chain / Is fastened to an angel’s feet” (174-175). The chain fastened to the angel’s feet embodies Christabel’s lack of freedom in the castle. This room that is decorated with strangely carved figures (171), hidden deep in the castle, is full of secrets, and unspeakable horrors will soon unfold there.

In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, the repetition and consistency of certain literary devices work to elucidate a sensual expression of the sublime, and the emotional and physical connection of nature to man. Incorporating devices such as alliteration and assonance, Coleridge utilizes these elements as a way to illustrate the sensual and pleasurable world of Xanadu. For instance, assonance is present in almost half of the entire poem, remaining consistent until what is around halfway through the second stanza. Most notably though, is its presence in the first stanza, as it is present in terms such as “Xanadu”(1), “Kubla Khan”(2), “Alph”(3), “ran”(3), “caverns”(4). In the repetition of these vowel sounds, the poem gives off an “ooh” and “ahh” sound, creating a sensual experience for the reader in interpreting this depiction of Xanadu.

I found it interesting though, how this repetition of vowel sounds seemingly coincides with alliteration found in the poem, such as “river”(3) and “ran”(3), “measureless”(4) and “man”(4), “sunless”(5) and “sea”(5) and so on. Serving as what is almost a juxtaposition to the repetition of vowel sounds, the repetition of consonants could seemingly represent the natural world of Xanadu in relation to the more sensual and human aspects illuminated through the assonance. In the world of Xanadu, where human pleasure seems to coincide with the natural world, the alliteration present in the poem works to elucidate the beauty of the natural world by incorporating smooth diction in describing the “river” and “sea”.

Another interesting takeaway I received from the poem is that within the sensual tone illuminated by these two literary devices, the metaphorical language in Kubla Khan evokes a sensual, and even sexual tone to the poem. Aside from the numerous mentions of the concept of “pleasure”, as found in the narrator’s idea of the “pleasure-dome”(2), other instances of metaphorical language evoking a sexual tone include the use of terms such as “deep romantic chasm”(12), “fertile ground”(6), “fast thick pants”(18), and “burst”(20).

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” is deeply infused with Romantic themes of the sublime, imagination, and creation. The content of the poem, as well as its form, both seemingly work to explore the importance of imagination and creativity. The narrator writes about a vision of a woman singing about Kubla Khan’s pleasure-dome having the ability to inspire “such a deep delight… I would build that dome in air – That sunny dome, those caves of ice!” (lines 44, 46-47). This theme of art inspiring imagination of the sublime is also seen in William Wordsworth’s poem “Tintern Abbey.” Wordsworth’s poem describes how the narrator’s imagination of the sublime is inspired by a painting. This exploration of imagination and creativity is also seen in the structure of Coleridge’s poem. Each stanza of the poem is written with a different form and rhyme scheme, which seemingly works to explore the creative potential of poetry.  

Additional meaning is added to the poem when it is viewed through the lens of English colonialism and travel. It’s worth noting that Coleridge’s inspiration for this poem came from a travel book about the East. He draws from the book’s descriptions to detail a location that is paradoxically beautiful and frightening. The poem describes “fertile” grounds that are full of “gardens bright,” “sinuous rills,” many “blossomed” trees, “forests ancient,” and “sunny spots of greenery” (lines 6, 8, 9, 10, 11). This beautiful setting contrasts with the “deep romantic chasm,” which is also contradictorily described as “a savage place… holy and enchanted” (lines 12, 14). Coleridge’s descriptions do not seem to be rooted in fact so much as a desire to craft a beautifully mysterious setting for his poem; the juxtaposition of the beautiful and the frightening create an image of the sublime. Coleridge also emphasizes the stunning, unknowable beauty of this location, referring multiple times to the “caverns measureless to man” (lines 4, 27). These descriptions are consistent with the Romantic fascination with nature and the sublime. However, they also create an image of a foreign, strange land that is consistent with European orientalist beliefs. While Coleridge’s exploration of imagination and the sublime fits within the Romantic literary tradition, his depiction of the East as an unknowable and mysterious place also reflects European imagination of foreign countries, which came as a result of the English empire’s colonial pursuits.  

Once again, I find myself reminded of Mary Wollstonecraft’s work, this time by Percy Shelley’s sonnet “Ozymandias.” In Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman she discusses “the divine right of husbands” and compares it to the “divine right of kings,” (196). As we discussed in class, this “divine right of kings” is that they were appointed by God and therefore, to question them is to question God. As a result of this right and unchecked power, kings can have an unjust, authoritarian rule. With this in mind, we can consider Shelley’s sonnet “Ozymandias” as a sort of warning of how this “the divine right of husbands” can go wrong. The traveler in this sonnet paints a picture of this crumbled statue, “Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, / And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,” (l. 4-5). The face described in these lines is not one of kindness or compassion, instead the face is stern, cruel, and demanding. The traveler goes on to say, “Tell that the sculptor well those passions read / Which yet survive (stamped on these lifeless things) / The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed” (l. 6-8). This former King not only acted cold towards his people, but he enjoyed ridiculing them. Being a king and therefore having that divine right, King Ozymandias was able to rule with unchecked power and control. The traveler mentions that on the pedestal lies the message, “‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’” (l. 10-11). The irony here is that there is nothing around the statue, no kingdom, no army, just sand. In a way this shows that the unchecked power King Ozymandias had because of his divine right to rule has its consequences. Instead of a thriving kingdom that remembers him, all that is left of King Ozymandias and his rule is his own decaying statue.

What is love? Is it an obsession? An addiction? What constitutes the rush of endorphins felt upon seeing your beloved? How passionate, how deeply does first love truly feel? While these questions may never be able to be answered fully, Mary Robinson’s “Sappho and Phaon” illustrates the intense attraction felt on behalf of Sappho and provides insight into what all-consuming love is like. The introduction provided for the reader by Robinson introduces this idea right away, saying sapphic love is “… enlightened by the most exquisite talents, yet yielding to the destructive control of ungovernable passions” (41). This sets the tone for the poem immediately – cluing the reader in that the story that ensues is one about wild, uncontrollable passion and emotion.

This theme of passion is consistent throughout the entire poem, yet it is in the sonnet “Sappho Discovers her Passion” that it really runs wild. This sonnet is describing Sappho’s first encounter with the excitement that comes alongside intense attraction, and the intensity of her feelings is matched with the intensity of the parallels in the first three lines of the sonnet, each a question beginning with the word “why.” Why, Sappho pleads, does she feel this wild attraction to Phaon? “Why does each thought in wild disorder stray?” (44) She asks, the question immediately followed by another “why” question. The repetition provides an auditory intensity akin to how one would passionately speak about the subject of their attraction when read aloud, lending an idea to how fierce Sappho’s feelings are toward Phaon.

While intense passion is a constant theme throughout the sonnets, it’s also contrasted with harsh reason in the sonnet “Invokes Reason,” in which Sappho calls upon reason to assist her with the wild nature of her attraction. She begs reason to “Lull the fierce tempest of my feverish soul” (86), and while Sappho is speaking to reason, the style of the poem changes. Words such as “wisdom” and “philosophy” gain capitalization, indicating that Sappho is placing value on these two things in contrast to her passion, yet Robinson capitalizes the word “passion” as well, showing that passion has as much a stake in the fight occurring within Sappho’s mind as wisdom and philosophy.

 

John Keats’s ballad, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” draws upon inspiration from Medieval romances and refashions the ideas that many medieval poets provided by including ideology that appealed to British citizens in the early nineteenth-century. I argue that Keats’s depiction of the beautiful faery lady is meant to represent foreigners, or those that are believed to be “Other,” and who are not described as being real English citizens. Through the use of sexual innuendos, the refrain of the opening stanza in the final stanza of the poem, and the musical quality of the ballad, the knight in Keats’s poem points out the problems that can arise when a man falls for the seductive charms of a beautiful, foreign woman. Thus, Keats, through the voice of the knight, suggests that the coupling of good Englishmen with foreign women is unacceptable, as it will taint the pure British bloodlines that the aristocracy has done their best to maintain. As a result, xenophobic ideology is expressed in Keats’s work.

The love affair between the knight and the faery lady is most clearly implied when the knight says: “She looked at me as she did love,/ And made sweet moan./ I set her on my pacing steed,/ And nothing else saw all day long” (l. 19-22). While the knight could be talking about placing her on his horse, I argue that the knight is actually using the term “steed” as a euphemism for his penis. The lines that surround the word “steed” support this notion, as the knight claims that his beloved “looked at [him] as she did love.” The love that the knight is referring to is not just the feeling, but rather the act of love-making, or sex, itself. The knight also claims that his beloved released a “sweet moan,” which would suggest that she was actively participating and finding some enjoyment in their sexually illicit affair. Their affair continued “all day long” and the knight became captivated by her “faery song” (l. 24). The poem mirrors the beautiful lady’s faery song, as it is a ballad, and thus has a musical quality to it. The rhyme scheme, which follows an ABCB rhyme, is catchy and rolls off the tongue, as it has the repeated B-line rhyme. The repetition of this line allows the poem to become stuck in the minds of readers, much like how the faery lady has become stuck in the mind of the knight.

The knight tells the speaker that he became enthralled by the beautiful faery lady, and at the end of their day together, the knight states: “And sure in language strange she said—/ ‘I love thee true’” (l. 27-28). Special attention should be paid to the knight’s choice of using the words “language strange” to describe the way that his beloved spoke to him. The knight points out his beloved’s “Otherness” to the readers when he calls her language strange, as he implies that she is speaking something other than English. He also describes her home as being an “Elfin grot” and claims that they met each other “in the meads,” which indicates that they are in a place that is totally dominated by nature and has remained untouched by the modern world (l. 13-29). Therefore, one can conclude that the woman in this poem is not an Englishwoman, but rather someone who comes from a different country and culture, and is thus unworthy of being with an Englishman.

The knight’s participation in a love affair with the faery lady turns out to be utterly disastrous for him, as he is filled “With anguish moist and fever-dew,/ . . . “And [he awakes] and [finds himself] here,/ On the cold hill’s side” completely alone (l. 10-44). The love that the faery lady claimed to share with the knight is made false and unviable. She is thus depicted as nothing more than a wicked seductress whose only aim was to harm him. Finally, the knight finishes his woeful tale by telling the speaker: “And this is why I sojourn here,/ Alone and palely loitering,/ Though the sedge is withered from the lake,/ And no birds sing” (l. 45-48). The use of this refrain is significant, as it draws a connection between the question that the speaker poses at the beginning of the poem and the warning that the knight is trying to share with him about the untrustworthiness of foreign individuals. The implication of the sickly knight’s description of a barren landscape with a “withered sedge” and “no birdsong” is this: the coupling between an Englishman and a foreign woman should not be encouraged or desired, as their union will not result in a fruitful marriage. An heir is not produced and the Englishman is left alone and miserable, without anyone to carry on his name or title. Keats’s Romantic poem acts as a great segue into Victorian poetry, as the Victorians cared deeply about Empire building and ensuring the continuation of pure British bloodlines.

The Wordsworth sonnet “Milton, Thou Shouldst Be Living at this Hour” stood out to me in the readings this week. Wordsworth starts the poem with the first word being “Milton.” Starting the poem with his name and having the first full sentence be ended with an exclamation point shows the urgency in which Milton is needed. Wordsworth continues the poem and personifies England as he addresses England as “she.” “England hath need of thee! She is a fen / Of stagnant waters! Altar, sword, and pen, / Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, / Have forfeited their ancient English dower / Of inward happiness. We are selfish men” (2-6). In these lines, Wordsworth presents Milton with the idea of what England currently is and of what she lacks, the inward happiness that people once had. Wordsworth talks about how England is a fen, somewhere that needs groundwater to survive, however, the waters are stagnant so that means England is not changing or growing. Instead, if it continues this path, it will die out. Not only this, in these lines Wordsworth groups things in threes, the later, sword, and pen as well as the fireside, heroic wealth and bower. In my opinion, the altar, sword, and pen are all means in which to convince people of certain things. People use an altar to get married or to preach whereas a sword is used to take lives or defend others. A pen is used to write and writing usually leads to art that convinces people of certain things or expresses emotions. All three of these objects can be used to cause/express one’s pain or to defend/make something beautiful happen. In this group, it seems as though Wordsworth includes these to show how there is no more “inward happiness” in these three objects, instead, their use and art is stagnant. Not only this, the second group of three is about home, they are all locations like buildings or near a fire. The wealth of a hall is something that can cause greed and I believe Wordsworth includes this in the group of three to show that England’s homes and places they are near too are being consumed by greed. These few lines show what England had lost, homes where greed does not exist and the proper use of weapons (the altar, sword, and pen).

As the poem continues, Wordsworth continues to “speak” to Milton. The poem seems to follow a Petrarchan form in which the rhyme scheme is abba abba cddece. The last six lines are vastly different from the first eight, they seem to talk more about Milton, it is praising him and his soul. Wordsworth uses this Petrarchan form to pose a question, asking Milton to help England, and then releasing the tension by creating a turn in the poem that leads to a peaceful description of Milton. Overall, this poem is a cry for help followed by a praise. Wordsworth does not think he can fix England on his own, he needs the help of the poets that have passed. In a world without Milton, selfishness grows, and virtue and manners are lost.

Coleridge creates a vivid narrative that takes readers through the surreal telling of the haunting tale of Christabel. The poem is full of detail, intense imagery, and high emotions. The focus of the poem is the lady Christabel, but it is not just the plot that follows her story, but also the form itself. The rhyme scheme and overall form of the poem reflect the powerful emotions Christabel is feeling, allowing the readers to be drawn into narrative alongside Christabel. Coleridge uses more than just powerful imagery as a tool for immersion, the form literally embodies the emotions of the heroine it follows.

Couplets are the most frequently used rhyme scheme in the poem. Couplets are easily recognizable for readers, similar sounds found one right after another allows for quick reading and digestion of a poem. The repetition and quickness of form in these couplets reminded me of feelings of fear itself. In experiencing a moment of uncertainty, anxiety, or fear a person’s heart usually tends to race, beating quickly and noticeably. This is reflected in the couplets that seem to be never ending when reading the poem.

The couplets are most frequent at times when Christabel is feeling fearful or encountering something unfamiliar. Even before the truly horrifying parts of the story are introduced, couplets are found when learning of Christabel’s dreams that “made her moan and leap” (29), or gray and chilly nights (20). As emotions shift, so does the rhyme scheme. Christabel is faced with a situation of “what it is she cannot tell” (40), as a result the rhyme scheme spreads out and moves from couplets to a staggered ABAB form. This slows down the flow of the poem, and as the rhymes become more separated and choppier, so do the thoughts of Christabel; who slows herself to ask questions about her surroundings: “Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?” (44). Christabel leaps suddenly (37) and so does the rhyme scheme. When she sees something unfamiliar (“a damsel bright”, 58) the rhyme scheme shifts back to couplets and emulates what could potentially be the racing thoughts of Christabel.

In addition to rhyme, the structure of the stanzas themselves often reflect what is happening in the poem itself. When Christabel is fearful of the strange lady Geraldine (62-65), and the strange lady herself claims that she “scarce can speak for weariness” (70) the stanzas become noticeably shorter as these fears and feelings of weariness are expressed. The connection between form and content in Christabel allows Coleridge to not just convey a story, but also an experience that can be felt by both the characters and readers of the poem.