La Belle Dame sans Merci | Summary

Lines 1–12
The ballad consists of two parts of dialogue, each uninterrupted by the other and each uncouched by the normal story-telling mechanisms for identifying speakers (“I said,” “he said,” etc.). Because of this, the identity of the first speaker, whose part is completed in the first twelve lines, remains cryptic. Though he (or, it could equally be argued, she) reveals the identity of the other (the “knight-at-arms”), the first speaker says nothing, at least directly, about himself. He does, however, give plenty of information about the situation of the...

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