Dec 22, 2009

Lamia | Lamia

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]

Lamia | Lamia

At a glance:

The Poem

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