The superficial reading of this poem is that it is simply the story of a knight bewitched by beauty, who becomes the abject slave of a fairy woman and who falls asleep, waking up alone and die on a hill in the meadow. However, it could be perceived as a romantic vision regarding the importance of youth, beauty and emotions, and the transience of these factors. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The poem is written predominantly in the poetic form of a ballad, the topic is the common tale of unrequited love and a supernatural occurrence, themes common to the ballad; the stanzas are four lines long with an ABCB rhyme scheme and memorable iambic tetrameter. However, there are some deviations that lead the reader to realize the possibility that perhaps this is not as ancient a poem as the traditional form and archaic wording seem to suggest. This is most clearly evident in the final line of each stanza where the iambic tetrameter is broken up and there is a monosyllabic trimeter instead. This confuses the lyrical rhythm of the poem causing it to have a slightly disjointed tone. The abrupt cessation of the line also seems to echo the knight's sudden awakening to solitude and alerts the reader to the fact that the end of his life is near. In a traditional ballad one would instead expect a continuous meter or trimeter to be present on the second and fourth lines rather than just the fourth. The traditional melancholic tone of the poem is further evoked by the use of repetition that recurs throughout the poem. , for example the word pale, which is repeated five times. This paleness seems to denote the condition of those who are "slaves" of "la belle dame", their slavery has caused their deterioration, it is not a slavery of the body but of the heart and mind. One of the underlying themes of this poem seems to be the sense that the loss of such an exquisite emotion as love is fatal, but that love by its nature is transitory, and therefore to truly experience it one must completely renounce the self. It is unclear whether the woman herself is real or imaginary, but the sense of intensity of the emotion is not hindered by this. In fact, it is perhaps this very idea of ​​the intangibility of emotions that makes them so irresistible. Perhaps this is also why the cruel face of love is personified in a "fairy child", because fairies are mythical beings, intangible creatures, of an iridescent beauty, which can disappear as quickly as a thought and are often described as spiteful, even malevolent. The female character is the predator, who takes sadistic pleasure in the pain of men, you could say this is a very subversive view of women. This malevolent quality seems to be shown in the fact that the lady has no mercy, she has enslaved many men without remorse, however one could see that the poet is simply using the tale to illustrate men's vulnerability to beauty, is that him? embodying a personal experience of helplessness, of feeling tied to a woman? Could it represent, in broader terms, the bonds of marriage? This could be possible if the garlands that the knight gives to the lady are symbolic, they could be representative of chains or oaths that bind. The fact that they are made of flowers shows that beauty and nature can be deceptively powerful and dangerous. Nature in this case seems to mimic the deterioration of the knight's health through the progression of the seasons, which indicates the brevity of life and emotions. The change of season is depicted in thelines: "The squirrel barn is full / And the harvest is done." and even in the absence of birdsong, which reflects the absence of love, when "no birds sing", it becomes winter in the soul. The migration of birds also seems to mimetic the lady's passage to the next man, her abandonment of the knight. The "cargo" is described as "withering" from the lake, as if it were growing old, shrinking from the lake as if afraid. Although he has withered, he is not yet dead, like the knight who "palely lounges", he is on the verge of death. This fatality is underlined especially in the third stanza where the pallor of death is described. The “lily” has connotations of funeral flowers and the “withered rose” is definitely dying love as roses are a traditional image of love. They describe the loss of color in the cheeks and the deathly pallor of the knight and at the same time explain it. The "fever-dew" is the perspiration caused by the disease, it adds to the flower metaphor with the word "dew" which also seems to represent the cold of the morning, which is appropriate since the knight has just woken up from the heat of love to the coldness of reality and also because it leads the reader to imagine a cold sweat, like that of a fever. It is also interesting because love has often been described as an illness, people are said to be "lovesick" and the sweat is perhaps reminiscent of the nervous sweat that often occurs when meeting a new lover. It is demonstrative of an intensity of feeling, both physical and emotional. The idea of ​​pain seems to be implicit with that of love, even the woman's representation of love is a "sweet moan", moan being usually connected with pain. She is also described as crying "in full pain", this creates an image of her eyes, red and swollen with tears, but it is unclear why she is crying, and there also appears to be a sexual undertone which links to the idea of ​​pain and of pain. pleasure being connected, she is a seductress and a temptress. The representation of love and women in the poem is decidedly pagan in contrast to the Christian ideals of a chaste woman, unattainable until marriage and therefore subject to the will of man. This woman accepts kisses and falls asleep from the knight, "putting him to sleep." She has "wild eyes" and it seems that the idea of ​​her being wild, messy and free is more appealing than that of a traditional woman. The poem seems to use pagan images such as that of nature and fairies in opposition to the courtly love of the king and the knights who are shown as "pale warriors" in love. The knight appears to have been enchanted, common images of enchantment are used, such as singing, eating roots and a "strange tongue". The rhythmic and lyrical pattern of the poem is itself hypnotic and seems to echo the "walking steed" and the "song of Faery". Even the title of the poem, being in French, seems to echo the lady's extraneousness compared to what is known, and demonstrates that she speaks another, softer language. It is as if the knight is hypnotized, he imagines that she loves him, even though he cannot understand her actual words and describes having seen "nothing else all day" as if he is totally paralyzed by her image and the world outside had passed. without notice. The kings and princes in his dream have "hungry lips" which adds to the feeling that time is passing quickly around them, they are starving in the emptiness of the lady's presence. It is clear that a long time has passed for the knight to make flower garlands for the lady, but it is autumn or winter when the poet finds him. We know that he will die because it is his "last dream", this means that it is his last dream, it is ambiguous whether the knight has)