Explore the ways in which Keats depicts power in 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci.'

Explore the ways in which Keats depicts power in 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci.' 

The poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci is a ballad, a medieval genre which John Keats revived making his poem simple. by using this form Keats is able to make his poem accessible for people to understand leading him to speak to his audience and place his views across. The poem is about a knight who is on the verge of death, the poem isn't explicit about why the knight is dying. However, it is left partly to our imagination. Ultimately, the poem is about the dangers of obsession and fixation. La Belle Dame Sans Merci was written towards the end of Keats's life, after his brother Tom died of tuberculosis but before Keats found out he too was dying of tuberculosis. During Keats life he had suffered and lost many important things and has experienced many tragic losses which he portrays in his poetry. He wrote this poem in 1819 and it was published in 1820. Keats depicts power in many ways throughout La Belle Dame Sans Merci, he uses the characters to represent different aspects of living during that time he witnessed.

First of all, the protagonist who is the knight is shown as weak with the first stanza. As the reader we can automatically see something is wrong with the knight as he is 'alone and palely loitering?' The knight doesn't fulfil the traditional chivalric idea of a knight as he is 'pale.' With the use of 'loitering' this could suggest he doesn't know what to do with no direction in life. The consonance of the L sound makes the line sound musical, drawing attention to the words. Keats uses the character of the knight to symbolise himself as he wrote this poem after his brothers death as he would of felt many strong emotions and felt like he didn't belong in society. The knight is weak in the poem as the narrator is asking all the questions and its not until stanza 4 where the knight actually speaks reflecting the powerlessness he has. Keats uses flower imagery  to describe the knight. 'I see a lily on thy brow' this metaphor suggesting how haggard the knight looks, it also conveys his paleness. The lily is also the flower associated with death and therefore contributes to the deathly feel of the poem.

Keats depicts power  through the use of the narrator in the poem who is a powerful character. The narrator takes control of  the poem however nameless, is still able to frame the narration. The narrator starts the poem with a question  'O what can ail thee. Knight- at- arms' which then is repeated in the second stanza as the knight doesn't answer immediately. Therefore, the unnamed narrator has to repeat the question due to voiceless knight. The effect of the dysfunctional communication could represent the poet as the speaker and poetical inspiration as the knight who is has lost its voice and lost its inspiration as in the days where Keats was writing, inspiration was very little. However, Keats then finds Spenser which is his inspiration and this is represented when the knight replies, as it's Keats finding his inspiration. The narrator also describes the knights appearance by using the adjectives 'haggard' meaning tired looking and 'woe- begone' meaning the knight is obviously sick and depressed and these words describe the knight which highlights how deathly and drawn he looks.


The title of the poem translates into a beautiful women without mercy, suggesting she is powerful due to the fact she has no mercy. We met the fairy lady in the story, where the knight 'made a garland for her head/ And bracelets too, and fragrant zone.' However in the next stanza 'I set her on my pacing steed,/ And nothing else saw all day long.' The knight thinks he has control and power over her as she sat on his horse however this could be sexual connotations. The knight is so absorbed with his erotic encounter with this fairy lady that he saw nothing else for 'all day long.' She was able to hypnotise him with her beauty suggesting she has the power. Similarly in the next stanza the fairy lady is feeding the knight 'she found me roots of relish sweet,/ And honey wild, and manna dew' Keats is suggesting she holds the power over the knight as she is able to provide for him.