Lamia According To Keats
Despite Lamia’s existence in Greek mythology, as being full of misery, she is often portrayed as a hideous monstrosity; the name even, Lamia, is a reference to the Greek word for “gullet”. Eating and devouring the flesh of children seems to have been her destiny from the beginning. Keats’ poetic description of Lamia is romanticised in the Gothic sense; as in, combined with the feeling of terror. There are many works of realism available, in which Lamia is the subject of the portrait; she’s combined usually with a snake, or a serpent’s skin. The title of the ballad is simply ‘Lamia’ and it was written in 1819, at the height of Gothic literature’s popularity, fame, and of course condemnation from the upper class educated males who snubbed Gothic fiction for better books; like how to use leeches properly, etc.
In the beginning of the poem, even those who haven’t read the piece before can automatically sense the time frame Keats wants to set for the work with his lines, “Upon a time, before the faery broods / Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods”, as to say that this is a time before faeries were as popular in stories as they were now. He brings the scene to the reader easily, to tell the story. Because of the importance of a natural setting in Gothic literature, or poetry, Keats uses highly vivid and melodiously detailed descriptions of the scene in which the ballad begins. The story goes on to describe Lycius, a young man from ancient Greece, falling deeply in love with Lamia. Lamia in the poem is a serpent disguised as a beautiful young woman; she is described as being both natural, compared with nature, and then again is compared to the supernatural, combining each element in her character.
Lamia and Lycius carry on a love affair, and then plan to get married, becoming engaged to one another. Keats describes Lamia as having the head of a serpent, but the mouth of a woman, and then goes on to describe her immense powers of seduction, and embodied temptation. He also makes various references towards religion in the ballad, comparing Lamia to a demon, perhaps Lilith. When Lycius and Lamia are nearly upon their wedding day, a wizened old man cleverly tells Lycius the truth of his intended bride. When the old man reveals the truth, Lamia exposes her true form as well, and Lycius dies of grief.