Lamia condensed Flashcards
Fantastical setting
‘upon a time, before the faery broods’
‘nymph’, ‘satyr’, ‘fauns’
Love in a fantastical setting is attainable; in reality it cannot last
‘Nor grew they pale, as mortal lovers do’
Lamia’s transformation
‘serpent prison house’
‘some penanced elf,/ Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self’
‘her elfin blood in madness ran’
‘nothing but pain and ugliness were left’
‘Now a lady bright,/ A full born beauty new and exquisite’
‘A virgin purest lipped’
‘As though in Cupid’s college she had spent/ Sweet days a lovely graduate’
Lamia and Lycius’ love
Transforms because…‘I love a youth of Corinth’
Lamia ‘fell into a swooning love of him’
‘so delicious were the words she sung,/ It seemed he had loved them a whole summer long’
‘Put her new lips to his, and give afresh/ The life she had so tangled in her mesh’
‘every word she spake enticed him on’
Inevitability/ Foreshadowing
‘Even as thou vanishest I shall die’
prophetic interjections:
‘woe afterwards befell’
‘had Lycius lived to hand his story down
‘too short was their bliss’
‘Love in a hut, with water and crust, Is– Love, forgive us!-cinder, ashes, dust;/ Love in a palace is perhaps at last/ More grievous torment than a hermit’s fast’
Sexual imagery
‘won his heart/ More pleasantly by playing woman’s part’
Descriptions of Corinth (anti-industrialisation message)
‘populous streets and temples lewd’
‘that purple lined palace of sweet sin’
descriptions of Apollonius, the force of reason
‘my trusty guide/ And good instructor; but tonight he seems/ The ghost of folly haunting my sweet dreams’
