Lamia (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: John Keats
- First Published: 1820
- Type of Work: Narrative
- Genres: Poetry, Narrative poetry
- Subjects: Folkloric or magical people, Mythology or myths, Marriage, Ghosts or apparitions, Legends, Gods or goddesses, Weddings, Greek or Roman times, Monsters, Greece or Greek people
The Poem
Lamia is a narrative of 708 lines of rhymed couplets, divided into two parts of approximately equal length. The major source is a brief passage in Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) describing the marriage of Menippus Lycius, a twenty-five-year-old “philosopher” of “staid and discreet” decorum, to “a phantasm in the habit of a fair gentlewoman.” She is exposed at her wedding by Apollonius as “a serpent, a lamia,” upon which she, her house, and all who were in it instantaneously disappear. John Keats embellishes Burton’s...
[The entire page is 1481 words long]
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