Lamia by Keats- Summary

Keats' Lamia

Summary

Hermes, Greek god of commerce and messenger to the gods, is searching for a nymph who he has fallen in love with, and who is invisible to him. He comes across Lamia, in the form of a snake, who reveals it is she who has made the beautiful nymph invisible. She says that she will reveal the nymph to him if Hermes gives her a human form. He does so.

Lamia meets Lycius, a young man, who falls in love with him (it is disputed that she puts a spell over him, though this is just one interpretation).

Eventually, Lycius pressures Lamia into having a public wedding. Lamia is not at all enthusiastic, but submits on the condition that Lycis will not invite the philosopher Apollonius to the marriage feast.

Apollonius turns up uninvited anyway and, during the wedding ceremony, stares at Lamia, making her nervous and uncomfortable. Lycius confronts him, and Apillonius yells "Fool from every ill/ Of life I have preserv'd thee to this day/ And sgall I see thee made a serpants prey?"

He reveals her to be a snake; Lamia vanishes and Lycius dies of heartbreak.

The story can be read as an algory for the relationship between poetry (Lamia), the Romantic poet (Lycius) and the rationalist of the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason (Apollonius).

Classical Language / Characters in Lamia

In order of when they appear in the poem.

Nymph- In Greek and Latin mythology, they were minor female spirits of the natural world, eg forest nymphs, springs, seas, mountains, meadows, etc.

Satyr- In Greek and Latin mythology, a satyr is a male being with horse like features.

Dryad- Roman version of a nymph.

Faun- Roman version of a satyr.

King Oberon- A king of the fairies in Renaissance literature.

Hermes- Greek messenger god (messenger to the gods of Olympus), and god of commerce and boundaries. Also associated with merchants and thieves. Called Mercury in Roman mythology.

Mount Olympus- Where the 12 main Greek gods lived in myth.

Jove- More commonly known as Jupiter, Roman god of the skies. Called Zeus in Greek myth.

Links in Gothic Texts

Lamia, The Bloody Chamber, Wuthering Heights

Links 

The all consuming power of love

• 'Lamia' can be seen as a warning against all consuming love, like the kind of obsessive love that Keats had for Fanny Brawne, because it threatens to blind you from the truth and reason, just as Lycius is is blind to Lamia's false form. CONTEXT: Rebellion against Enlightenment, not focusing on such intense human emotions.
• Catherine and Heathcliff are so consumed with each other that they feel they are each other. When she dies, Heathcliff moans that he can't live without his 'soul' and Cathy famously states: 'I am Heathcliff'. But this love, believing they are identical, is dangerous because both of them trap themselves; neither develops or grows. This is shown through Catherine's child-like nature, eg her inability to understand that she cannot commit to one man and still continue her love affair with her childhood sweetheart. CONTEXT: Transgressing the boundaries of conservative Victorian unions of marriage by presenting a passionate love that is also immoral (she is married), but does keep to moral codes by presenting it as dangerous. Daughter of Vicar.
• In contrast,  The women in the stories in 'The Bloody Chamber' are generally symbols for feminism, and the men are too, so there are many examples of a love that is not all-consuming, but one-sided or even oppressive. CONTEXT: This reflects the more post-modern or late modern society Angela Carter lived in, where her world was becoming less patriarchal as feminism entered societies consciousness. 

Contradictory female sexuality

• ""A virgin purest lipp'd, yet in the lore / Of love deep learned to the red heart's core" Lamia is both a virgin, and sexually aware. She is sensual, "sweet" and excessively beautiful. But she cannot help this, she is not deceiving Lycius in this way, she just cannot help that she is naturally sensual, implying that female sexuality cannot be denied or repressed.
• In 'The Bloody Chamner', the female protagonist presents herself as virginal, innocent: she "knows nothing of the world". However, it is made clear to the reader through confessed emotions and events that she is actually a sexual being like any other: when the Marquis undresses her she was "aghast to feel myself stirring". Carter seems to imply that a woman is not always passive; patriarchal society believes that men should be the powerful ones in both sexual and general relationships, but the woman can have an active role in this, she can have her own will and emotions and can be fulfilled.
• CONTRAST- Catherine and Heathcliff never really have a sexual relationship, they are content with their feelings and holding hands and closeness.

Critics on Keats

Critics on Keats

Andrew Motion

Andrew Motion rejects the long upheld idea that Keats was isolated from political and social issues, and wrote poems based purely in the style of his Romantic, sensual spirit. Motion argues that Keats "translated" political, philosophical and medical questions into immediate, general ideas in his poetry, just in a less obvious and direct way than his contemporaries did (like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelly and Blake for example).
Motion believes that the parts of the human experience that Keats wrote about, which people have received as purely romantic for generations, were written in thoughtful response to the world around him.

http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/proved-upon-our-pulses-keats-in-context

Other critics

• Douglas Bush noted that "Keats's important poems are related to, or grow directly out of...inner conflicts." eg his love for Fanny Brawne is likely to have inspired the thoughts expressed in 'Bright Star' and other works. 

•  "Beyond the uncompromising sense that we are completely physical in a physical world, and the allied realization that we are compelled to imagine more than we can know or understand, there is a third quality in Keats more clearly present than in any other poet since Shakespeare. This is the gift of tragic acceptance, which persuades us that Keats was the least solipsistic of poets, the one most able to grasp the individuality and reality of selves totally distinct from his own, and of an outward world that would survive his perception of it." - Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling: 

• All written in May 1819, "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," and "Ode on Melancholy" grew out of "a persistent kind of experience which dominated Keats's feelings, attitudes, and thoughts during that time. Each of them is a unique experience, but each of them is also, as it were, a facet of a larger experience. This larger experience is an intense awareness of both the joy and pain, the happiness and the sorrow, of human life. This awareness is feeling and becomes also thought, a kind of brooding as the poet sees them in others and feels them in himself. This awareness is not only feeling; it becomes also thought, a kind of brooding contemplation of the lot of human beings, who must satisfy their desire for happiness in a world where joy and pain are inevitably and inextricably tied together. This union of joy and pain is the fundamental fact of human experience that Keats has observed and accepted as true. Wright Thomas and Stuart Gerry Brown 

Keats' Idea of Negative Capability

Keats Notes

Keats' Idea of Negative Capability

In a letter to his brother, Keats recalls how he pondered what made genius creative minds- he uses Shakespeare as an example- so unique and able to create thoughtful works of masterpiece.

"At once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously- I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties. Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason"

Keats believed that the ability to open ones mind, to empathise wholly and be comfortable with seeing contradictions, made a great poet. Keast also says "A poet is the most unpoetical of anything else in existence, because he has no identity," reinforcing the idea that, for Negative Capacity, the poet must be willing to remain in a conflict of being, without the need to reach for a rational answer or revert back to his own original identity. He must have a certain passivity, giving him the ability to become someone else; to be receptive of the world out of context and not seek to catagorise experience, turning them into rational theories.

Explore the way in which Keats depicts power in ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’

Induction Essay

Explore the way in which Keats depicts power in ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’

Keats takes the reader to an archaic world of fantasy in his ballad ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ on an exploration of the nature of power, and how even those at the top of the social or intellectual hierarchy can be subject to something with power over themselves; Keats also looks at the power dynamics between the genders. In the poem, Keats reveals his own sense of powerlessness, in the enchanting language inspired by a poet generations before his time, Spenser. In ‘La Belle Dame’, Keats reaches back into the Spenserian era to show sharp contrasts with his own, commenting on how his world does not demand the same powerful respect as the idealistic realm Spenser revealed to Keats does.

The protagonist is a ‘knight-at-arms,’ a character more suited to 16^th century pieces of fiction, and seemingly out of place in a more contemporary poet’s work. The fact that the central character and poetic form are traditional contradicts with how the character is actually presented. He is not how you would expect a traditional, chivalric knight. In contrast to the knights surroundings, where the “squirrels’ granary is full” and the “harvests’ done,” implying a world full of plenty, the knight is “haggard” and “woe-begone,” implying weakness and emptiness. The power that we expect from such a character is not there, and the abruptness of the mere four-syllable line at the end of the quatrain jumps out at the reader, halting the energy of the poem. The knight could be an allegoric self-portrait of Keats, the poet famed for having an effeminate nature.

The atmosphere of the poem changes as the knight seems to take over as narrator. Now, there are breaks- caesuras- in the stanzas as he describes a woman (“Her hair was long, her foot was light”). The caesuras give the poem a more natural flow, helping to build the image of the enticing woman who, gathering from her description, the knight seems to idolise and marvel at. Yet, the knight seems to control her, and Keats’ language objectifies her: the knight makes a “garland for her head,” makes her bracelets, dressing her like a doll, and he sits her on top of his horse. She is described as being “Full beautiful—a faery’s child”. Whilst the word “beautiful” seems complementary and “faery” adds to her enchanting mystique, the word “child” is condescending; the knight assumes a power over here even whilst idolising and adoring her. Keats could be reflecting society’s objectification of women and men’s power over them in his time through the language he uses to place the man in a position of power over the woman. However, if we look at the woman as more of a symbolic literary construct, the knight’s simultaneous idolisation of her and control over her suggests that she is a personification of Keats poetry, or poetry in general. It is the thing that inflames his imagination, like Spenser’s ‘Fairy Queen’ inspired him. He can create and control poetry, using literary techniques to convey whatever plays on his mind ad toils within his heart. And yet, this woman is not a completely sympathetic character, and Keats’ knight is not completely in control.

In stanza 9, the knight recalls how the woman “lulled me to sleep,” shifting the power balance and placing it in her hands; now the knight is vulnerable. When she lulls him to sleep, he is plunged into a series of disturbing dreams, which are reminiscent of the hallucinations one sees when intoxicated, just as the knight seems to be intoxicated with the woman. Placing this series of events back into what could be one of the literal readings of the extended metaphor, Keats seems to be exploring the power of addiction. Keats’ mind is enthralled by poetry, and yet the nature of writing poetry- commenting on society and politics in an artistic way- can cause him pain, as it allows him to see the flaws in modern society. For example, in this poem, he explores how women are objectified in society and seen as weak, but are also held accountable for wrong-doings, like leading men astray with sexual behavior. This is one inference that can be made from the hallucinations that the knights sees: he seems to see past male victims of the woman, La Belle Dame. He sees “pale kings and princes” who seem to have, like the knight, been enticed and tricked by the woman, as they yell out: “‘La Belle Dame sans Merci/ Thee hath in thrall!’”. Woman have often, throughout history, been portrayed in literature, even in religious texts, as either damsels in distress or a feme fatale- a sexually promiscuous temptresses who leads men astray. Keats seems to portray society’s double standards in ‘La Belle Dame’.

Reading and comparing the idealistic world of Spenser to his own industrialised and increasingly capitalist society, Keats’ Romantic mind seems to be saddened. Poetry involves extensive use of the imagination, which can link the real with the ideal and unveil the flaws in reality. This seems to be Keats’ addiction and one of the readings of the woman in ‘La Belle Dame’. The fact that the woman in the poem leads men away from the real world into an ideal one, only to leave them blighted and ill, shows Keats’ disillusionment with reality.

By the end of the poem, we return to the knight, who is still lead “alone and palely loitering,” still weak and empty, almost as if he were dying or wasting, just like the “sedge is withered from the lake”. One reason for the knight being in this state could be because, as discussed, he is led to represent the suffering from addiction. However, given the context, he could also be weak from the wasting, draining power of love, another one of Keats’ addictions. He is no stranger to illness; when he wrote the poem he was suffering from tuberculosis, which those beloved to him had died from. Describing the knight as “pale” and showing him as weak after his encounter with the woman, Keats seems to compare the power of love with the potency and destruction of illness. This would be a reflection of Keats’ own deep love for Fanny Brawne, who he could not be with due to his poverty, but whom he was deeply in love with.

Keats, in stanza 10, seems to tell the reader that every man has his own ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’- his own addiction. Even powerful, authoritive “kings and princes” are “death-pale” and weak at the mercy of what addiction has them captured, just as Keats is captured by his own addiction.