L 'La Belle Dame sans Merci', a ballad by *Keats, manner of i7th-cent. drama, the assumptions of written 1819, published 1820, which describes a knight i8th-cent. philosophical sensationalism, and intim­ fatally enthralled by an elfin woman. Although Keats ations of demonic Romantic revolt. It was successfully himself spoke of it lightly, critics and biographers have adapted for stage and screen by C. *Hampton, whose written of it at length, many concurring with Robert work caught the mood of the cynical 1980s. *Graves (The White Goddess, 1948) that 'the Belle Dame represented Love, Death by Consumption . and La Creevy, Miss, the cheerful little miniature-painter in Poetry all at once'. It was much admired by the *Pre- Dickens's * Nicholas Nickleby. Raphaelites and W. *Morris asserted that 'it was the germ from which all the poetry of his group had Ladislaw, Will, a character in G. Eliot's *Middlemarch. sprung.' La Belle Dame sans mercy is also the title of a poem Lads' literature. By the mid-1990s, most of the translated from *Chartier, attributed at one time to feminist battles of the last three decades seemed *Chaucer, but now thought to be the work of Sir to have been won, at least in the rather rarefied Richard Ros. circles inhabited by writers and publishers. It was time for a backlash. Sections of the media now began to LA BRUYÈRE, Jean de (1645-96), French satiric mor­ exalt an old-fashioned, unreconstructed model of alist, author of Les Caractères ou les mœurs de ce siècle the British male, for whom the female body was (1688; The Characters, or The Manners of the Age, once again relentlessly objectified and the ideal of 1699). The work, consisting of short portrait sketches serious commitment to emotional relationships was revelatory of the vanity and corruption in human jettisoned in favour of a sort of boorish hedonism behaviour, was published as an appendage to La centred around sport, drinking, and recreational sex. Bruyère's translation of the Characters of *Theophras- Propaganda along these lines was issued, beneath a tus from which it derives its method. It was imme­ cheery veneer of *postmodern irony, by a new rash diately successful on publication, and has been widely of men's magazines including Loaded, Arena, and admired by such writers as *Flaubert, *Gide, and FHM. *Proust. See also CHARACTER WRITING. The 'New Lad' was born, and soon established his LA CALPRENÈDE, Gauthier de Costes de (1614-63), own, quite distinct tastes in literature. Among the key French novelist. His heroic romances achieved an texts are Nick *Hornby's Fever Pitch (1992) and High immense international vogue, and had a marked effect Fidelity (1995), which show how the languages of on the heroic drama of high classicism in France and of football and record collecting can function as a code in the English Restoration. They divide into three cycles: which men discuss their feelings; A White Merc with Cassandre (10 vols, 1644-50), trans. Sir Charles Fins (1996) and Rancid Aluminium (1997) by James Cotterell (1667), centred on the life of the daughter Hawes, notable both for their laconic, wisecracking of Darius, wife of Alexander the Great; Cléopâtre (12 style and their emphasis on violence as a means of vols, 1647-56), trans. R. Loveday and others (1652-9), resolving conflict (they owe a strong debt to Quentin describing the adventures of the daughter of Antony Tarantino, the New Lad's favourite film director); John and Cleopatra; and Pharamond ( 12 vols, 1661-70), first King's The Football Factory ( 1996), Headhunters ( 1997), four vols trans. JohnDavies (1662), narrating the loves and England Away (1998), which have attracted many of the first French kings for the Cambrian princess male readers by offering a vicarious insight into the Rosemonde. world of football hooligans; and, from a slightly earlier era, Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho (1991), in LACAN, Jacques, see STRUCTURALISM and MARXIST which the female body is repeatedly mutilated and LITERARY CRITICISM. dismembered in the name of social satire. LACLOS, Pierre Choderlos de (1741-1803), French In 1996 a backlash-against-the-backlash was insti­ novelist. His masterpiece, Les Liaisons dangereuses gated by Bridget Jones's Diary, an immensely successful (1782), influenced by *Richardson's epistolary novels, novel in *diary form by Helen Fielding, whose hero­ records the unscrupulous seductions of Valmont, ine's frustration at the emotional fecklessness of her aided by his accomplice Mme de Merteuil. In depicting various boyfriends struck a chord with thousands of the moral and sexual raids of a cynical aristocratic female readers. couple on an unsuspecting society, it remarkably combines searching psychological analysis in the Lady Audley's Secret, see BRADDON. 567 LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER | LADY'S NOT FOR BURNING Lady Chatterley's Lover, a novel by D. H. * Lawrence Tennyson said of it T met the story first in some ( privately printed, Florence, 1928; expurgated version, Italian novelle: but the web, mirror, island etc. were my London, 1932; full text, London, i960). own. Indeed, I doubt whether I should ever have put it Constance Chatterley is married to Sir Clifford, into that shape if I had then been aware of the Maid of writer, intellectual, and landowner, of Wragby Hall in Astolat in Mort Arthur.' (Quoted by F. }. *Furnivall, the Midlands. He is confined to a wheelchair through 1868.) The story bears little resemblance to his sub­ injuries from the First World War. She has an sequent treatment of it in 'Lancelot and Elaine' of the unsatisfying affair with a successful playwright, * Idylls of the King. The Lady, like *Mariana, was one of Michaelis, followed by a passionate love relationship several enchanted or imprisoned maidens to capture with gamekeeper Oliver Mellors, son of a miner and ex- the Victorian imagination, and was the subject of officer from the Indian army. She becomes pregnant by many illustrations, including a notable one by Holman him, goes to Venice with her sister Hilda partly to *Hunt. obscure the baby's parentage, but returns and tells her husband the truth, spurred on by the knowledge that Lady of the Idle Lake, see PHAEDRIA. Mellors's estranged wife Bertha has been stirring Lady of the Lake, in the Arthurian legends, a rather scandal in an effort to reclaim him. The novel ends shifting supernatural character. In *Malory she gives with the temporary separation of the lovers, as they Arthur the sword Excalibur, but when she asks for the hopefully await divorce and a new life together. head of Balyn as payment Balyn strikes off her head, for Lawrence's detailed and poetic descriptions of sex­ which deed he is banished from the court. Also called ual union, and his uncompromising use of four-letter the Lady of the Lake (in Malory 'chief lady, suggesting words, caused the book (long available in foreign more than one) is Nimiane (Nymue and, probably by editions) to be unpublishable in full in England until scribal misreading, Vivien), the wife of Pelleas, who i960 when *Penguin Books took the risk of producing loves Merlin, whom she tricks into revealing his magic a complete text. They were prosecuted under the arts and then imprisons in a tower of air in the forest of Obscene Publications Act 1959, and acquitted after a *Broceliande from which he never escapes. In Malory celebrated trial during which many eminent authors she is said to have accompanied the three queens who (including E. M. *Forster, R. *Hoggart, H. *Gardner) bore Arthur away by ship after his death. In Celtic appeared as witnesses for the defence, a victory which origin she may derive from Morgan, the archetypal had a profound effect on both writing and publishing lake lady. in subsequent decades. Lady of May, The, a short pastoral entertainment by P. Lady of the Lake, The, a poem in six cantos by Sir W. *Sidney. It consists of a dispute between a shepherd *Scott, published 1810. and a forester for the hand of the rustic May Lady, and The action takes place chiefly on and around Loch was performed under the aegis of the earl of * Leicester Katrine in Perthshire, and involves the wooing of Ellen for *Elizabeth I when she visited him at Wanstead in Douglas, the lady of the title and daughter of the 1578 or 1579. The character of the pedantic school­ outlawed Lord James of Douglas: she is courted by master Rombus may have suggested that of Holof ernes various suitors, including a mysterious wandering in *Love's Labour's Lost. huntsman-knight whom she ferries to the island in the lake, and who after various adventures and skirmishes Lady of Pleasure, The, a comedy by J. *Shirley, acted is revealed at court, as she seeks her father's pardon, to 1635, printed 1637. be King James V himself. The lively narrative evokes In the central plot Lady Bornwell is cured of her highland scenery and manners, and contains various desire to live a life of thoughtless pleasure, partly by the poetic interludes, including the *coronach (Canto III) discovery of the worthlessness of her foppish suitors 'He is gone on the mountain' and the ballad (Canto IV) and partly by her husband's pretence that he too means 'Alice Brand', which tells the story of Alice's lost to live extravagantly. The play's scenes of fashionable brother, transformed by the Elf King into a hideous conversation, the contrast between the manners of the dwarf, and redeemed by his sister's courage. The poem true gentleman and lady of the sub-plot and the was immensely popular, and inspired several com­ affected main-plot characters, and the rapid trans­ posers, including *Schubert and *Rossini.