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LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCY: Introduction (5775 words) |
 | La dame, having no desire "[t]o be rewled by manis goveraunce" (line 315), is characterized by a Boethian frame of mind in which reason is paramount, and she refuses to be swayed from "undreneth the standart of Daungere [Resistance]" (line 180) by any of l'amant's feints or ploys. |
| L'amant's claim that la dame is somehow to blame for his desire for her, and that this in turn obligates her to take pity on him, is a stereotypical one that critics reproduce when they argue that her rejection should be read as frigid or hard. |
| La dame has her own version of this: "This sikenes is right easé to endure - / But [Only a] fewe people it causith for to dye" (lines 293-94). |
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La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (429 words) |
| The original was written by Keats in 1819, although the title is that of a fifteenth century poem by Alain Chartier. |
| Although La Belle Dame Sans Merci is short (only twelve stanzas of four lines each, with an ABCB rhyme scheme), it is full of enigmas. |
| More recent feminist commentators have suggested that the knight in fact raped the Belle Dame, and is being justly punished — this is based on textual hints like "she wept, and sigh'd full sore". |
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