Poetry - La Belle

Question 1

Context

Answer 1

Written in 1819, significant year for Keats in terms of love and loss

Question 2

Key points

Answer 2

• Relationship between reality and imagination
• Deceptive nature of love
• Dangers of love
• Ballad form and vivid lyrical language

Question 3

Structure / form

Answer 3

• 12 quatrains in the form of English Ballad
• Balladic stanza roots poem in tradition and ties to mythic content
• Follows traditional ABCB rhyme scheme

Question 4

Key quotations

Answer 4

“Full beautiful - a faery’s child”

• Romantic attraction, however gives first insight into potential danger, references to otherworldly, mythical beings

“Her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild”

• Triadic structure, descriptions of feminine beauty
• Danger - “wild”

“Honey wild and manna-dew”

• Reference to mystical danger

“pale kings and princes too, pale warriors, death-pale were they all”

• Death and suffering that is facilitated by the speaker’s idealisation and subsequent ignorance

“Alone and palely loitering”

• Left alone and suffering due to his romantic pursuit