Masterworks: Historical Short Fiction Inspired by Works of Art

A HISTORICAL WRITERS FORUM ANTHOLOGY

La Belle Dame Sans Merci by JW Waterhouse: the artwork that inspired the story

Over the years of my writing career, Celtic culture and history, and its influence on art and literature, have fascinated me for decades. Consequently, many works of art have inspired or influenced both my fiction and non-fiction writing. Having extensively studied early medieval history as it relates to and underlies Arthurian legend and folklore, I grew interested in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood movement of the nineteenth century due to its emphasis on medieval, mythological, and Arthurian themes. In particular, John William Waterhouse (1849-1917), although not a member of the original Brotherhood, closely followed their styles and subject matter.

For the Historical Writer Forum’s anthology, I chose to write a story to fit Waterhouse’s 1893 painting, La Belle Dame Sans Merci. It depicts a lovely young woman in the woods, seated on the ground while pulling a kneeling knight in late medieval armour to her, possibly for a kiss. Studying it, I questioned: Who are these characters? What are they doing? Where are they? And why does the beautiful lady have no mercy?

La Belle Dame is not part of the Arthurian cycle like others of Waterhouse’s paintings, such as The Lady of Shallot and Tristan and Isolde. Fortunately, I had written a short article on La Belle Dame, years earlier. I could not locate the original article, but I still had the research materials in a file.

Clues surface in two poems of the same name. John Keats’s 1820 poem speaks of a fairy-like young woman who lures a knight into a death-like dream state on a cold hillside. She loves nature and woodlands. A French medieval poem from 1424 by Alain Chartier offers some details of a relationship of unrequited love between a Lady and a forlorn Lover, the latter assumed to be a knight. While the painting draws vague aspects from these poems, the characters’ names and motives remain unknown.

To fill out the characters’ lives, I drew mainly from Chartier’s poem. Because he was from Normandy, France and is believed to have written the poem in 1424, and because the armour in the painting appears to be late medieval, I pinned the setting to Normandy during that time. Then, looking for a momentous event to further tie down the time and location, I discovered the Battle of Verneuil, fought on 17 August 1424, during the Hundred Years War that pitted the French against the English who tried to impose rule over France. The town of Verneuil and its castle passed back and forth between French and English control, eventually becoming the site of a battle compared to the major French defeat at Agincourt in 1415. Further, research into the history of the period also revealed a long-standing alliance between France and Scotland, called the Auld Alliance, which further played into the forthcoming battle. So…La Belle Dame became a Norman woman who meets a Scottish soldier.

The Hundred Years War traumatised both of these characters and dominates their backstories and provides motives for what happens to them and between them in Verneuil. With the terror of another siege or battle on the horizon, these two have big decisions to be made! Can they trust each other? Help each other? Or split up, each to face the English on their own?

Chartier’s poem offers some details on the relationship between the Lady and the Lover, where the Lady stubbornly refuses to respond to the knight’s advances and he grows increasingly forlorn. By the end of Chartier’s poem as well as Keats’s, the lady supposedly enchants the knight, lures him into the woods, and leaves him in a state of something like suspended animation, where he may die. Why she does this remains open for speculation. Does he die of a broken heart? Did she take revenge on him with poison? A fatal wound? Was it a misunderstanding? Was it all a bad dream? In my story, what does La Belle Dame do to the knight? No spoilers! You’ll need to read it to find out.