In this reading La Belle is the victim and the knight is an unreliable narrator rather than being authoritative, the way we normally think of a narrator. The "questioner" describes him as loitering. The word is probably derived from Old English lutian which means "lurk." That can carry the connotation of ambush. In any case, loitering is not the activity that we usually associate with a knight. The poem, of course, "begins" at the "end" and we have only the knight's interpretation of events. However, as a fallible narrator his views are flawed and his tale is distorted.
In the fifth stanza La Belle is described as moaning which the knight claims is "sweet." He tells us that it is because she is in love with him. Could she be moaning out of fear or pain? The sixth stanza could be describing a kidnapping and, if "steed" is read as a double entendre, a rape. The knight quotes La Belle as saying "I love thee true" in the next stanza. That is his perspective of her "language strange" which could be translated as "no" instead. We only have his word for it. To him her "elfin grot" is her home. Perhaps she's trying to get away from him. She is crying and sighing "full sore." The knight is using the term in the sense of sorrow but doesn't question what is causing her sorrow. "Sore" could be interpreted as pain, physical or mental.
He next tells of her lulling him to sleep. Perhaps she is able to drug him with what he sees as "roots of relish sweet,/ And honey wild, and manna dew" in the seventh stanza. Then she escapes. His dream is part of his delusion and his portrayal of himself as deserted victim. Somehow the seasons have changed very quickly from spring to winter. He is still "loitering." A Medieval case of He Says, She Says?
Next we'll look at the interpretations of the artists.
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