{"id":502,"date":"2016-05-01T22:59:35","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T02:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=502"},"modified":"2016-05-01T23:00:52","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T03:00:52","slug":"la-belle-dame-of-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2016\/05\/01\/la-belle-dame-of-death\/","title":{"rendered":"“La Belle Dame” of Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0“Ballads have strong associations with childhood: much children’s poetry comes in ballad form. [\u2026] Ballads emphasize strong rhythms, repetition of key phrases, and rhymes. [\u2026] Ballads do not have the same formal consistency as some other poetic forms, but one can look for certain characteristics that identify a ballad, including [a] simple language, [\u2026] stor[y-like poetry], [\u2026] ballad stanzas – consisting of four lines, rhymed ABCB (or sometimes ABAB–the key is that the second and fourth lines rhyme), repetition, [\u2026] and third-person objective narration.<\/a>“<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0It is the third-person narration that makes John Keats\u2019 poem \u201cLa Belle Dame sans Merci\u201d (1819) peculiar as a ballad. The poem opens with two descriptive third-person \u201cobjective\u201d narration stanzas in which the poet sets the environment. We are in an idyllic dark location where a \u201cknight-at-arms\u201d (line 1) ails \u201calone and palely loitering\u201d, being also \u201chaggard and so woe-begone\u201d (line 6).<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The poem suddenly changes towards a more subjective narration, the audience can\u2019t easily understand who \u201cI\u201d is who is telling the story until the very last stanza where the narrator is indeed the knight-at-arms that \u201csojourn[s t]here, alone and palely loitering\u201d (lines 45-46).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
“La Belle Dame Sans Merci” by ConfusedLarch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The question here is who is this Belle Dame? Weirdly described as \u201ca faery\u2019s child\u201d (line 14), with \u201cwild\u201d (line 16) eyes, this woman can easily make our narrator fall in love with her and vice versa, because she tells him \u201cI love thee true\u201d (line 28) even if she spoke \u201cin language strange\u201d (line 27). Everything happening between the two is so fast that once we read \u201cthere I dreamed \u2013 Ah! Woe betide! \u2013 the latest dream I ever dreamt\u201d (lines 34-35), we feel relieved because we realize that she is a demon-like figure that kills men by seducing, abducting, deceiving, and eventually using them for her own pleasure. She is, after all, what the other fate-like \u201ckings and prince\u201d (line 37) tell him, she is \u201cLa Belle Dame sans Merci [that] thee hath in thrall!\u201d (lines 39-30).<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0I would argue that she does not represent what many critics say she represents: the femme fatale that puts a man to disgrace. Back when he was writing this poem, John Keats had recently found out about his disease that would have surely brought him to death. Because of this, one can tell that he focused his lyrical attention on death. In this poem, the elfin-fairy woman is perhaps death itself. He cannot say no to her, she appears out of nowhere, she killed brave \u201cwarriors\u201d (line 38) before him, and eventually \u201clulled [him] asleep\u201d (line 33). There\u2019s nothing that, metaphorically speaking, can\u2019t refer to death, particularly if the first thing he sees is the flower of death:<\/p>\n

“I see a lily\u201d\u00a0<\/em>(line 9).<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0“Ballads have strong associations with childhood: much children’s poetry comes in ballad form. [\u2026] Ballads emphasize strong rhythms, repetition of key phrases, and rhymes. [\u2026] Ballads do not have the same formal consistency as some other poetic forms, but one can look for certain characteristics that identify a ballad, including [a] simple language, [\u2026] … Continue reading “La Belle Dame” of Death<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2737,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2737"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}