Ligeia (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Edgar Allan Poe
- First Published: 1838
- Type of Plot: Fantasy
- Time of Work: The indefinite past
- Setting: A castle on the Rhine and an abbey in a remote area of England
- Principal Characters: The protagonist, Ligeia, Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine
- Genres: Short fiction, Fantasy, Gothic fiction
- Subjects: Wives, Memory, Love or romance, Immortality, Supernatural, Nineteenth century, Marriage, Obsession, Substance abuse, England or English people, Death or dying, Drug addiction or addicts, Remarriage, Bereavement or grief, Germany or German people, Opium, Moths
- Locales: England, Germany
The Story
The narrator-protagonist recalls with obsessive longing the nature of the love that he felt for Ligeia, his first wife, who has died. Her beauty had about it the strange attractiveness of antiquity. She had the radiance of a Delian Muse; her hair was Homerically “hyacinthine” in color, her nose Hebraically aquiline. Her eyes were those of the black-eyed houri, nymphs of the Muslim paradise; they were the twin stars Castor and Pollux and shone like the truth at the bottom of Democritus's proverbial well. They recalled the timeless change found in the contemplation...
[The entire page is 1345 words long]
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