La belle dame sans merci

• • Keats believed in negative capability - the ability to be able to experience the world without judgement
  • 1st view : anti-women - image of femme-fatale/seducing men
  • 2nd view : using medieval romance to mock femme fatale image
• • semantic field of weakness - “o what can ail thee” “alone and palely loitering“ - contrasts to the image of a knight:
  • 1)exploring the power of love - even knights can be overpowered by seductresses
  • 2) overdramatic/mocking tone - archaic language makes it sound more elevated than it actually is/over the top/extreme
• • ”The sedge has withered from the and no birds sing” - speaker is saying what’s the matter with you
  • “The squirrel’s granary is full, And the harvest’s done”
  • interrogatives - belittling tone of dying or creates sympathy/pity 🫂
• • “I see a lily on thy brow, With anguish moist and fever-dew, And on thy cheeks a fading rose Fast withereth too”
  • lily - death - medieval symbol of purity/chastity but rose
  • fading rose - losing romance/heartbroken - symbolism of garlands of Christ - martyr/saintly - something bad has happened to him
  • Ballad/archaic language - medieval symbolism
• • Presentation of the lady - unreliable narrator - perception of the knight
  • “faery’s child“ - otherworldly beauty or ominous foreshadowing of the femme fatale role - fairies were perceived as tricksters - Church: minions of the devil
• • “her foot was light”
  • “Light- connotations of grace and elegance
  • “and her eyes were wild” - passion? or unpredictable?
• • “I made a garland for her head and bracelets too, and fragrant zone“
  • adoration = semantic field of gifts
  • care/effort
  • circle - waist/hips/head - circle of overwhelming entrapment and obsessive behaviour
  • syndetic listing - how much he loves her or mocking the gift overload
• • “She looked at me as if she did love“ - ambiguity
  • did she look at him with love or is he manipulating him “as if [she] loved him”
• • “And sweet moan”
  • euphemism for sexual pleasure - women are so over emotional that they can’t contain their joy
  • is it a juxtaposition - “sweet” ”moan” - complaint that she doesn’t like something he’s doing - egotistical or pretending to not like it
• • “I Set her on my pacing steed” - active voice - dominance or chivalrous act
  • “pacing steel” - euphemism for sex - treatment of the woman
  • ”nothing else saw all day long“ = extremity obsession or mocking