'La Belle Dame sans Marci' by John Keats

'La Belle Dame sans Marci' by John Keats

1. form and structure

   • form of a traditional folk ballad
     • broke into 12 quatrains
     • the story of one event and the repetition of ideas and refrains
   • iambic tetrameter
     • one unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed syllable
     • tetrameter (4 iambs per line)
   • last line of each stanza is shorter because it is punching into the next stanza

2. "Alone and palely loitering", a knight tells of his meeting with a beautiful, mysterious woman. She seduces him into riding away with her to a magical place, leaving the reality of this world behind.

   • it is suggested through out the poem that the man is in a dream which is magical
     • and there she lulled me asleep

3. langugae

   • title translates as 'the beautiful lady without mercy'
     • creates an ominous tone right from the beginning as this is not what the reader might traditionally expect from a courtly ballad.
   • "Alone and palely loitering" suggests suggests the lonely, desolate surroundings.
   • "haggard" and "woe-begone" to describe the knight which highlights how deathly and drawn he looks.
   • Webegin to get an impression of her seductive nature from the line, "And her eyes were wild."
   • Repitition
     • at the beginning and the end shows he hasn't moved as he still where he was when he went to sleep
     • rhyming scheme
       • regular (ABCB)

4. themes

   • love
     • between the man and the 'magical creature'
   • supernatural
     • the woman in his 'dream' is strange and different
   • dreams/reality
     • the man is in a supposed dream and is then pulled out back to reality
   • abandonment/loss
     • the man is alone at the end of the poem which suggests he has been abandoned by the woman in his 'dream'