Keats 'Beautiful Lady Without Pity'

Interpret (tell me why you think the poet wants to use such images)The image of dead leaves in winter weather brings to mind ideas of decay, hopelessness and coldness. The poet wants to highlight how depressing an addiction to drinking metho is.

Compare the views of relationships in ‘The Unequal Fetters’ with those in ‘To his Coy Mistress’. What is suggested about the different ways in which men and women view love?

A Comparison of The Lady of Shallot by Alfred Lord Tennyson, My Last Duchess by Robert Browning, La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats and To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell

The small strip across the top of the visual, presents us with an alternate world that is natural and heaven-like where numbat-like creatures are suspended upon tree branches. The gaze of the numbat-like creatures leads us to the quote, “They didn’t live in trees like we did”. Through the inclusion of text Tan portrays that the numbat-like creatures don’t understand the rabbits. This quote does not show any strong emotions, but instead the blatant tone bestows a ‘clueless’ feeling to us, the responders. This section is very small in contrast to the rest of the image showing the rabbits. This symbolically represents the unprecedented manner in which the rabbits came and quickly “made their own houses”. At observing the picture more closely, we can conclude that where the numbat-like creatures are sitting, the sky is lighter compared to where the rabbits are placed; implying that the lighter colour is the time the numbat-like creatures were familiar

The poet orders his listener to behold a “solitary Highland lass” reaping and singing by herself in a field. He says that anyone passing by should either stop here, or “gently pass” so as not to disturb her. As she “cuts and binds the grain” she “sings a melancholy strain,” and the valley overflows with the beautiful, sad sound. The speaker says that the sound is more welcome than any chant of the nightingale to weary travelers in the desert, and that the cuckoo-bird in spring never sang with a voice so thrilling. Impatient, the poet asks, “Will no one tell me what she sings?” He speculates that her song might be about “old, unhappy, far-off things, / And battles long ago,” or that it might be humbler, a simple song about “matter of today.” Whatever she sings about, he says, he listened “motionless and still,” and as he traveled up the

During the medieval times, Marie de France, unlike the male writers of her time, wrote courtly stories that depicted women who were predominantly featured in the primary roles with empathy and questioned the sexist predicaments women were often subjected to. Women often times struggled to find their voice, but her stories told the perseverance and progress within those constraints. Instead, she wrote of men idealizing wealthy, powerful, independent, beautiful women. She inserts the thoughts and feelings from a woman’s perspective. In a sense, giving women the voice they strived to have heard in a male dominated time period. As Damon stated in the article “Marie de France: Psychologist of Courtly Love,” “Contemporary readers might have noted that the characters departed occasionally from the established laws of courtly conduct; none the less, as all such departures were towards reality, they were welcomed.” She opened the door for women’s self-expression and individual achievement. Marie de France’s popular adulterous love stories bring about many fascinating ethical questions.

Friendship is a blessing, people say, and it is. Men often express their appreciation and respect for male friends through literature. A fellowship, medieval authors call it. A deep and unbreakable connection between males, transcending romantic love. A relationship based on mutual support and admiration, thriving of intellectual stimulation. Nothing is more valuable to a man than a friendship, not even the love of a woman; it is only a man, after all, who can understand another man. To seventeenth century men, friendship (just like everything else) is a male blessing – a patriarchal gift – not for women. Female friendship was “impossible,” for an amicable and supportive relationship between women could never exist. Platonic friendships existed between men, not women. Yet, several female poets challenged this notion, emphasizing importance of female friendships as male authors and poets do. Friendship is defined through a feminist lens in Aemilia Lanyer’s “The Description of Cookham” and Katherine Philips’ poetry in which female characteristics that are often overlooked are deeming meaningful through friendship.

hint of death within the abeyance of the forest. This is shown by the “half-drowned”

“The courtly lady…possesses a curiously hybrid gender. While maintaining stereotypically female sexuality, she also holds, in principle at least, the status of a feudal lord.” Burns’ statement insinuates a reversal of power dynamics between man and woman in the courtly love lyric, implying that the woman’s stereotypical beauty and sexuality in courtship, is a gateway to subverting and overpowering the lovesick male, making her a superior lord. The Amour Courtois lyric is deemed inconsistent with the representation of woman as an empowered “feudal lord” due to the sheer objectification of femininity and beauty. Poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer and William Dunbar commend a woman’s aesthetic appeal or satirise the lack of it, thus elevating medieval misogynistic expectations of physical beauty as a feminine necessity that objectifies women under the control of man’s advances. Throughout courtly love lyrics female beauty is a purely frivolous and superficial trait lacking predominant depth, to render woman as a “lord” would be poetically conflicting as the only power exemplified by female subjects in courtship is through the idolisation and sexual lust of the male devotee.

The second stanza of the poem explores the concept of communication, as many methods are stated. For example, “birds to carry messages/taped to their feet/there are letters to be written.” (25-27). This gives the reader the images of trying to desperately communicate with someone. Birds are seen as a sign of freedom and this gives a sense of being able to communicate freely.

At the bird’s appearance and apparent vocal articulation, he is at first impressed, then saddened. He compares this evening visitor as only another friend which will soon depart, just as “other friends have flown before” (58). But the raven again echoes quite aptly his one-word vocabulary, thus leading the man on to think more deeply about the possibilities that exist at this juncture. Somewhere deep inside him, he has realized that it doesn’t matter what question he poses, the bird will respond the same.

“La Belle Dame sans Merci” takes on a different view of the theme of love. This poem is broken down into three parts. In the first part of the poem, the speaker appears to be some unknown person who asks a lonely,

This is significant because it emphasizes the melancholy and mournfulness that he depicts with imagery in the first stanza. Later on in the second stanza, he author describes the tree the narrator would have planted as a “green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs”. The author uses visual color imagery of the color green to describe the sapling in order to emphasize just how young the newborn was when he died. Later on in the poem, the narrator speaks of himself and his brothers kneeling in front of the newly plated tree. The fact that they are kneeling represents respect for the deceased. When the narrator mentions that the weather is cold it is a reference back to the first stanza when he says “of an old year coming to an end”. Later on in the third stanza the author writes “all that remains above earth of a first born son” which means that the deceased child has been buried. They also compare the child to the size of “a few stray atoms” to emphasize that he was an infant. All of these symbols and comparisons to are significant because they are tied to the central assertion of remembrance and honoring of the dead with the family and rebirth.

Therefore, in the second stanza “Too dark in the woods for a bird,” (line 5), he uses this imagery to express that even birds cannot live in the woods because of how much darkness is present. Birds singing resemble happiness, and the woods and its darkness are showing two scenes contradicting each other, showing in some way the deeper meaning beyond the literal one. Another symbol used by Frost was light, symbolizing hope: “The last of the light of the sun.” In this line he gives a clue to the reader expressing how even though it was dark, there could still be a chance for light to come in those woods for some hope and maybe

John Keats’s poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” dramatizes the conflict between dreams and reality as experienced by the knight. On a late autumn day, the speaker stumbles upon an ailing knight and asks what is wrong. The knight reveals that he had fallen in love with a beautiful lady, “a faery’s child” (14), who then abandoned him after professing her love and spending one night together. The speaker is recounting his experience with the knight to his audience.