English Literature / Unit 13 ENL 1218 short lesson, about 20 seconds
"La Belle Dame sans Merci"
Captions available
The idea
"La Belle Dame sans Merci," of eighteen nineteen, is a ballad in which a knight, "Alone and palely loitering" where "the sedge is wither'd from the lake, / And no birds sing," tells how a fairy lady enchanted and abandoned him. The title means the beautiful lady without mercy.
In practice
A wasted knight, a fairy lady.
Where people slip
Keats revives the ballad's mystery.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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