Lamia (poem)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject.
Please help improve the article with a good introductory style.

"Lamia" is a ballad poem written by English poet John Keats. The poem, written in 1819, is about a young man from Ancient Greece who unwittingly falls in love with a serpent disguised as a beautiful woman (otherwise known as a Lamia). Lycius, the main character, and Lamia, the serpent, carry on a love affair and are engaged to be married; their relationship, however, is destroyed when a cunning old sage reveals Lamia's true identity, whereupon she returns to her serpent state and Lycius dies of grief. The poem explores Keatsian themes such as the tension between reason and sensation, and the illusory but potentially redemptive quality of poetry and love.

1 Analysis
2 Influence
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Analysis

This article or section is written like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup.
Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (May 2008)

The setting of "Lamia" is fantastically radical. The beginning of the poem supplies such a setting:

"Upon a time, before the faery broods

Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods"

Already, from line one, we have a setting that's both very supernatural and very isolated, two important features of the Gothic. The setting also suggests a lost period, a time before any we can recall. The setting also exposes a concern with nature. Nature is an important element of Gothic setting, and Keats emphasizes the vitality of nature by personifying it as a character in the poem. For example,

"From rushes green and cowslip’d lawns"

that was

"breathing upon the flowers his passion new,

and wound with many a river to its head"

The creature, Lamia, herself is even described as an animal, with nature playing a large part in the description:

"Striped like a Zebra, freckled like a pard, / Eyed like a peacock".

Hence, like Frankenstein, nature plays a large part in "Lamia," but in slightly more supernatural sense. Not only is Lamia described as being connected with nature, but she is described as supernatural:

"She was a Gordian shape of dazzling hue",

She is composed of both mortal and immortal elements, which was unusual in literature at the time:

"Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet,

she had a woman’s mouth, with all its pearls complete".

Keats brings the unusual convention of the supernatural to life by intertwining familiar and unfamiliar elements when describing Lamia. Sexual temptation is another convention of the Gothic that Keats uses in "Lamia". He brings this convention to life because rarely was extreme sexual temptation used in neo-classical texts. He also makes it unusual by creating the desire of a mortal for an immortal being. Lamia is described as a temptress, e.g.:

"...some penanced lady elf,

some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self".

This is also a biblical allusion, which are scattered throughout Keats's poem. They serve to counteract the neo-classical references by alluding to less recommended stories and figures, such, in this case, as the devil. Lamia herself seems to parallel the serpent from the Garden of Eden, and there are references to the Book Of Genesis. Not only are there religious references, but other references include Milton's Paradise Lost, William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Greek mythology, for example, "Apollo's presence". Confinement and claustrophobia are also utilised in the poem.

[edit] Influence

The poem had a deep influence on Edgar Allan Poe's sonnet "To Science", specifically lines 229–238 and the discussion of the baleful effects of "cold philosophy". Poe's closing lines also echo several lines near the beginning of "Lamia".^[1]