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Assumed to have been written in 1424, La Belle Dame sans Mercy is a French poem on courtly love written by Alain Chartier. [1]
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Assumed to have been written in 1424, La Belle Dame sans Mercy is a French poem on courtly love written by Alain Chartier. [1]
The poem is written in a series of octaves (huitains in the French) each line of which contains eight syllables (octosyllabes), which is also the style of the poet François Villon in the "Ballade des dames du temps jadis" written later in the 15th century. In the debate between the Lover and the Lady, the alternating octaves delineate their arguments.
The rhyme scheme is ABABBCBC of crossed rhymes (rimes croisées).
The body of La Belle Dame sans Mercy is composed of 100 stanzas of alternating dialogue between a male lover and the lady he loves (referred to in the French as l'Amant et la Dame). Their dialogue is framed by the observations of the narrator-poet who is mourning the recent death of his lady.
The first 24 stanzas describe the mourning poet, the self-described most unhappy lover ("le plus dolent des amoureux"), as he embarks alone on horseback, driven to wander by Sadness (Tristesse) and divested of his capacity to feel by Death (Mort). [2] After wandering for a time, the narrator-poet finds himself obliged to attend a party with two of his friends. It is at this party that the poet observes the unhappy lover, with whom he can empathize, and his lady. [3] At the end of the twenty-fourth stanza, the narrator-poet takes on the role of silent observer, hiding himself behind a trellis. He listens to and then claims to transcribe the conversation between the melancholy lover and the lady. The lover, in traditional love language, offers multiple reasons for the lady to accept him as her lover; the lady refuses to acquiesce in witty and reasoned ripostes. In the last four stanzas the poet-narrator takes over the narrative to give the moral of the poem.
A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines.
Guillaume de Machaut was a French composer and poet who was the central figure of the ars nova style in late medieval music. His dominance of the genre is such that modern musicologists use his death to separate the ars nova from the subsequent ars subtilior movement. Regarded as the most significant French composer and poet of the 14th century, he is often seen as the century's leading European composer.
"La Belle Dame sans Merci" is a ballad produced by the English poet John Keats in 1819. The title was derived from the title of a 15th-century poem by Alain Chartier called La Belle Dame sans Mercy.
The chanson de geste is a medieval narrative, a type of epic poem that appears at the dawn of French literature. The earliest known poems of this genre date from the late 11th and early 12th centuries, shortly before the emergence of the lyric poetry of the troubadours and trouvères, and the earliest verse romances. They reached their highest point of acceptance in the period 1150–1250.
Émile-Auguste Chartier, commonly known as Alain, was a French philosopher, journalist, and pacifist. He adopted his pseudonym in homage to the 15th-century Norman poet Alain Chartier.
A virelai is a form of medieval French verse used often in poetry and music. It is one of the three formes fixes and was one of the most common verse forms set to music in Europe from the late thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.
Alain Chartier was a French poet and political writer.
Tail rhyme is a family of stanzaic verse forms used in poetry in French and especially English during and since the Middle Ages, and probably derived from models in medieval Latin versification.
"Le Bateau ivre" is a 100-line verse-poem written in 1871 by Arthur Rimbaud. The poem describes the drifting and sinking of a boat lost at sea in a fragmented first-person narrative saturated with vivid imagery and symbolism.
Medieval French literature is, for the purpose of this article, Medieval literature written in Oïl languages during the period from the eleventh century to the end of the fifteenth century.
Sir Richard Ros, was an English poet, the son of Sir Thomas Ros, lord of Hamlake (Helmsley) in Yorkshire and of Belvoir in Leicestershire.
This is a glossary of poetry.
"The Wild Swans at Coole" is a lyric poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865–1939). Written between 1916 and early 1917, the poem was first published in the June 1917 issue of the Little Review, and became the title poem in the Yeats's 1917 and 1919 collections The Wild Swans at Coole.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Le Testament is a collection of poetry composed in 1461 by François Villon. Le Testament, comprising over twenty essentially independent poems in octosyllabic verse, consists of a series of fixed-form poems, namely 16 ballades and three rondeaux, and is recognized as a gem of medieval literature.
The French alexandrine is a syllabic poetic metre of 12 syllables with a medial caesura dividing the line into two hemistichs (half-lines) of six syllables each. It was the dominant long line of French poetry from the 17th through the 19th century, and influenced many other European literatures which developed alexandrines of their own.
Le Livre de l’Espérance, also called the Consolation des Trois Vertus or the Livre de l’Exile, was written by the French poet and statesman Alain Chartier. Begun in 1428 in Avignon, the work was not yet complete by the author's death in 1430. It is a lengthy dream vision and allegory of political, theological and poetic significance written in both verse and prose Middle French. Modeled on the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius, instead of finding consolation through Dame Philosophy, it is the three Christian virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity, who offer solace.
Anne de Graville or Anne Malet de Graville (c.1490–c.1540) was a French Renaissance poet, translator, book collector, and lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude of France. She hailed from one of the most prominent families in the country, and overcame scandal to become a well respected literary figure at the royal court. In addition to authoring two texts, she was an avid collector of books and manuscripts.
Oton III de Grandson, name also spelled Otto, Othon, etc., was a nobleman, soldier, and poet in fourteenth century France. Although his military service was primarily to the King of England, his reputation for chivalry and poetry was renowned throughout Europe.
Isabelle de Beauvau or Isabeau de Beauvau was a French noblewoman, of the Beauvau family, lady of Champigny and de la Roche-sur-Yon, countess of Vendôme by her marriage.
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