Lamia Flashcards
(120 cards)
‘She was a maid more…
…beautiful than ever twisted braid’ (Lamia)
- After her transformation, there is a large focus on her beauty being her only noticeable character trait.
How does Romanticism manifest itself in Lamia?
- The power of the imagination.
- The beauty of the abstract/ambiguity.
- The spiritual.
- The supernatural.
The beginning
Use of stereotypical mythical setting:
1) Upon…
2) Repetition of…
3) ‘Nymph and… ‘Dryads and…
4) ‘King…
1)…a time
2)…before
3)…Satyr’ …Fauns’
4)…Oberon’
Beginning
Sexual Desire:
1) ‘amorous…
2) ‘ever-smitten…
3) ‘what a world of love…
4) ‘a celestial…
5) ‘breathing upon the flowers…
1)…theft’
2)…Hermes’
3)…was at her feet!’
4)…heat’
5)…his passion new’
Lamia pre-transformation:
1) ‘mournful…
2) ‘wreathèd…
3) ‘gordian shape…
4) ‘Vermillion…
5) ‘golden,
6) ‘Eyed like…
7) ‘rainbow-…
8) ‘the words she spake / Came,…
9) ‘beauteous wreath…
1)…voice’
2)…tomb’
3)…shape of dazzling hue’
4)…spotted’
5) …green, and blue’
6)…a peacock’
7)…sided’
8)…as through bubbling honey’
9)…with melancholy eyes’
Beginning
Love and pain:
1) ‘The ruddy strife of…
1)…hearts and lips!’
The nymph and Hermes:
1) ‘unseen…
2) Lamia: ‘let me have once more/ …
3) ‘she, like a moon in wane, …
4) ‘Her fearful…
5) ‘gave up…
6) ‘[Hermes’] celestial…
7) ‘keep her loveliness…
8) ‘Nor grew they pale…
1)…unaffronted, unassailed’
2)…A woman’s shape’
3)…faded before him’
4)…sobs’
5)…her honey.’
6)…heat’
7)…invisible’
8)…as mortal lovers do’
Lamia’s transformation:
1) ‘convulsed with…
2) ‘Lava ravishes…
3) ‘Eclipsed her crescents, …
4) ‘Undressed of all her…
5) ‘Nothing but pain…
1)…scarlet pain’
2)…the mead’
3)…and licked up her stars.’
4)…sapphires, greens and amethyst’
5)…and ugliness were left’
Lamia post-transformation:
1) ‘a lady…
2) ‘a full-born…
3) ‘new and…
4) ‘By a clear pool, wherein
5) ‘A virgin purest lipped…
1)…bright’
2)…beauty’
3)…exquisite’
4)…she passionèd / To see herself’ - allusion to Narcissus
5)…, yet in the lore / Of love deep learnèd.’
Love and pain:
1) ‘unperplex bliss…
2) ‘love, and pleasure…
3) ‘unperplexed delight…
1)…from its neighbour pain’
2)…and the ruddy strife of hearts and lips!’
3)…and pleasure known’
Lamia and Porphyro meet:
1) ’His fantasy was lost, …
2) ‘soon his eyes…
3) ‘she saw his…
1)…where reason fades’
2)…had drunk her beauty up’
3)…chain so sure’
‘Platonic…
…shades’
- A comment of Plato’s cave analogy about one’s perception of reality. A derisive one? Questioning the legitimacy of Plato’s partitioning of reality into what is observed and what is real, intimation that reality is entirely subjective to the imagination of a person. Paradigm Romantic.
What is a possible motivation for Keats’ motivation to write medieval and mythical poems?
- G.R Elliott believed that for Keats: ‘to draw into his verse more of life, external and mental, would be to shatter his mastery of beauty’.
- This battle is reflected in Lamia.
In what way is Keats’ poetry controversial?
- He criticised Wordsworth’s commitment to dogmatism, saying that he resents ‘being bullied into a certain philosophy’, in one of his letters.
- Could this be a motivation for the moral ambiguity constructed in Lamia?
Love and reality in the middle:
- ‘finer spirits cannot breathe…
…below in human climes, and live.’
Love and reality in the middle:
- Lycius ‘Swooned, murmuring of love, …
… and pale with pain.’
Love and reality in the middle:
- ‘The life she had so…
…entangled in her mesh’
Love and reality in the middle:
- ‘As he from one trance…
…was wakening / Into another.’
Fate:
- ‘The stars drew in…
…their panting fires’
Love and reality in the middle:
- ‘Lycius from death…
…awoke in amaze’
Love and reality in the middle:
- ‘by playing…
…woman’s part’
Blindness and reality:
1) ‘blinded…
1)…Lycius’
(Lamia) Trepidation, secrecy and danger:
- ‘Muttered, like tempest in the…
- …distance brewed’
Trepidation, danger and secrecy:
- ‘found them clustered…
…in the corniced shade.’
