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What was the role of the knight in medieval society
What was the role of the knight in medieval society
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La Belle Dame Sans Merci Questions 1) ”La Belle Dame Sans Merci” is a ballad. Prove this statement. The poem, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, is a ballad because it has element of the supernatural, it has stanzas made up of four lines, it follows one of the three possible rhyme schemes, and there is only one occurrence/episode/event. For example, this poem incorporates the supernatural in the fourth quatrain, “I met a lady in the meads, /Full beautiful - a faery’s child”. The fairy that is referenced belongs in the realm of the supernatural. Then, the poem follows the rhyming scheme, ABCB. This scheme is evident in the eleventh quatrain, “I saw their starved lips in the gloam, /With horrid warning gaped wide, /And I awake and found me here, …show more content…
In the beginning of the poem, the setting is described as a time where squirrels are ready for the winter and the harvests have finished. These descriptions are present in the second quatrain, “The squirrel’s granary is full, /And the harvest’s done”. Also there are no birds singing due to the migrations they typically follow in the fall. The absence of the birds is evident, “And no birds sing” in the first quatrain. Regarding the time period, the poem takes place in medieval times because the relevance of knights and fair maidens were only prominent in those times. The belief of fairies and other similar supernatural beings were also only seen in those times. The protagonist of the poem is a knight that is under the influence of a fairy, “Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,” and at “I met a lady in the meads, /Full beautiful - a faery’s child,”. 4) In verse three, what doe the lily and the fading rose each symbolize? What do each reveal about the …show more content…
After meeting with the fairy and caring for her, he is lulled through her powers where she shows him dreams of death and despair of kings and princes. The knight saw “pale kings and princes too, /Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; /They cried - ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci /Hath thee in thrall!’”. For any regular person, a vision such as the one shown to the knight would have scarred them. But since the knight is no ordinary person, he should have kept faith in himself and in god to move on and live with honour and glory. Instead, he stays put on the cold hill’s side, “And this is why I sojourn here /Alone and palely loitering, /Though the sedge is withered from the lake, /And no birds
To briefly summarize this poem, I believe that the poem could be separated into three parts: The first part is composed in the first and second letters, which stress on the negative emotions towards the miserable pains, illnesses that the parents are baring, and also their hatred of the birds. The second part, I believe will be the third and fourth letters, which talks about the birds’ fights and the visiting lady from the church. And the last part, starts from the fifth letters to the rest of them, which mainly describe the harmonious life between the parents and those birds.
As he slouches in bed, a description of the bare trees and an old woman gathering coal are given to convey to the reader an idea of the times and the author's situation. "All groves are bare," and "unmarried women (are) sorting slate from arthracite." This image operates to tell the reader that it is a time of poverty, or a "yellow-bearded winter of depression." No one in the town has much to live for during this time. "Cold trees" along with deadness, through the image of "graves," help illustrate the author's impression of winter. Wright seems to be hibernating from this hard time of winter, "dreaming of green butterflies searching for diamonds in coal seams." This conveys a more colorful and happy image showing what he wishes was happening; however he knows that diamonds are not in coal seams and is brought back to the reality of winter. He talks of "hills of fresh graves" while dreaming, relating back to the reality of what is "beyond the streaked trees of (his) window," a dreary, povern-strucken, and cold winter.
and beauty are represented by a rose and the laurel, which are both subject to
Symbols are one of those most important things to a story. They share the meaning of themselves, as well as the meaning for something else. Symbols usually make the important ideas stick out as well as make the reader have different ideas of what is actually being said. One of the many symbols in “Paul’s Case” is flower’s. From violets to carnations, the flowers Paul talks about are ones of many meanings. The flowers represent a continual motif, expressing Paul’s character.
“Skimming slightly, wheeling still, the swallows fly low over the field in clouded days,” The birds (swallows, to be exact) are mentioned twice, at the beginning and end of the poem. They seem to be the introduction and closing. They are solemn and peaceful, yet are also reminders of the battle. Or are they peaceful? The clouds could represent the clouded confusion of the battle and aftermath, and the sad and melancholy tones of the area
These seemingly negligible birds, symbols of the lyric voice, have intuited the Oven Bird's lesson and are the signs by which one is meant to divine Frost's acceptance of the linguistic implications of the fall from innocence. The Oven Bird, who watching "That other fall we name the fall" come to cover the world with dust, "Knows in singing not to sing." Instead, "The question that he frames in all but words / Is what to make of a diminished thing." The fall, in necessitating both birth and death, imposes a continuum of identity that compromises naming. The process toward death, begun with birth, transmutes and gradually diminishes form, thus adding to the equation - words are things before they become words and things again when they do - an element of inevitable, perpetual senescence. The birds of "A Winter Eden" say "which buds are leaf and which are bloom," but the names are always premature or too late: gold goes to green, dawn to day, everything rises and falls and is transformed. Thus the Oven Bird says, "Midsummer is to spring as one to ten," because a season - this or any other - may only be codified analogously. "Fall" takes on a series of identities: petal fall, the fall season, the first and fortunate fall, each of which bears, at the moment of articulation, the burden of a whole complex of moral, aesthetic, and literary valuations. This bird is a "midsummer and a midwood bird" that sees things at the moment of capitulation to the imperatives of fall. Loud, he predicts the inevitable, and his "language" reflects the potential meaninglessness of a world in which one is forced to define a thing by what it departs from or approaches rather than what it "is." To...
The speaker personifies the flower by describing how the moon-lily sings: “…it is singing—very far/ but very clear and sweet” (10-11). The voice of the flower is the voice of the woman. The flower is calling out to the man. The fact that the flower has to call out to the man implies that he does not accept the love of the woman. The speaker also describes the distance between the two people. He states, “The voice is always in some other room” (12). Once again the speaker is describing distance, but the man does not try to close the distance. The reason the man does not try to close the distance is because he does not love the woman. The lily represents the female and their love. In the poem, the speaker talks about a “garden” which is a metaphor for the female’s life (13). In the garden the speaker describes the flower as “in bloom” and that the flower “stands full and/ proud” (13,14-15). This section of the poem tells the reader that the woman’s love is strong and unwavering. The speaker compares the woman’s love to a lily because the love is pure of heart and beautiful. The relationship that the poem depicts is unhealthy for the female. The woman is putting too much effort into a nonexistent
Another worldly element is present in this poem. The narrator believes the bird is evil. “Tell me...
In the folk ballad, “The Holy Well”, the poet uses thirteen quatrains and establishes a ABCB rhyme scheme, with a
We know that the poem is set in a dark forest as the word ‘forest’ is used at the start of the poem. There are quite a few ancient words which are used throughout the poem. We do not use these words now, so we know that the poem is set a long time ago. The poet also describes a ‘turret’ which is a small bird tower. Only houses that are very old have these near their front door so the poet is suggesting that this poem is from a long time ago and the house is old.
The roses in the garden are something the serving-man remarks on “roses occasionally suffer from black spot . . . It is always advisable to purchase goods with guarantees…” (Aldiss 450) Here Teddy reports directly to the need for replacement of such false reality in order to omit imperfections. The rose is initiated earlier as a symbol for Monica, when she plucks one and shows it to David, and at the end he picks one as a reminder of her. And Teddy senses the importance of the roses for the mother and the child as he tries to bond
The poem symbolizes that nature continues on even as humans pass away. “Robins will wear their feathery fire, whistling their whims on a low fence-wire; and not one will know of the war, not one will care at last when it is done. Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, if mankind perished utterly” (Bradbury, par.41). The poem comes right before the house is destroyed. At the end of the story a tree falls on the house and causes a fire which destroys the house. “The wind blew. A falling tree bough crashed through the kitchen window. The room was ablaze in an instant.....Among the ruins, one wall stood alone” (Bradbury, par.47 and par.62). This fire is a symbol of a true natural destruction meaning technology will fail and nature will prevail.
He is almost sleeping while doing this. This creates a very powerful visual image. It epitomizes how the people left to grieve act. Many people stricken by death want to be left alone and bottle themselves up. The first few lines of the poem illustrate how deeply in sorrow the man is. This image should affect everyone. It should make the reader sympathize or even empathize with the man. Another main way he uses imagery is through the black bird or the raven. The presence of the bird is a bad omen. It is supposed to be followed by maleficent things. The bird is used to symbolize death figuratively and literally. The bird only says one word the entire poem. It repeats “nevermore.” This word can be interpreted multiple ways each time it is said. It is also possible that the bird is not talking. It is possible that the bird is an image created by
The setting takes place in the daylight of the woods. I felt that Frost set the poem in the woods because it helps reader imagine trees, leaves, and bushes. Therefore readers know that the speaker is alone without any road signs or knowledge of any direction on which road to take. The “yellow wood”(1) means that its somewhere in the fall when the leaves are changing colors. The “yellow” brings out a beautiful image of the autumn to readers. The “yellow wood” means there is a continuous decision one makes in li...
Stanza three explains what life was like at the farm he lived on, as the previous stanzas have. Line twenty describes the landscape and how beautiful it is. It describes it as Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air,” (20). Lines twenty one through twenty three use more imagery to describe the landscape. They use words such as “lovely and watery” (21) to show how pleasant it was to gaze upon the land. The word “And” is also repeated in the beginning of each of these lines which creates suspense. They also show repetition by repeating words such as “green” and it brings up the starry night again. Line twenty four talks about owls and how they are starting to come out. The day is starting to end and there is still beauty in everything. Now night has begun and all the things that made the day happy and carefree are starting to disappear. Lines twenty five through twenty seven use imagery to show that the moon is appearing and the horses and everything else is disappearing into the night. This begins to show that the youth the speaker is experiencing is starting to