male desire Flashcards
’ she taste unseen; unseen her nimble feet’
‘ her beauty is veiled.. to keep it unaffronted, unassailed by the love glances of unlovely eyes of satyrs, fauns and bleared silenus sighs’
Reveals the weakness of male deisre
feminist perspective could argue that this is wrong
‘thou shalt hold her’
- modal verb, reveals that she is demanding
feminist perspective would argue that the nymph should chose on her own
‘let me once more have a woman’s shape’
links to the theme of male desire, only wants to have a woman’s shape to be desired for Lycius. S
‘her fearful sobs, self-folding like a flower’
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vulnerable and without power and intimidated, the female is heard to be helpless in the soft ‘f’ alliterated sounds.
‘But the God fostering her chilled hand’
‘Fostering’: paternalistic active vocabulary of male dominance clothed in softness.
‘by a clear pool, wherein she passioned to see herself escaped from sore ills’ -
‘ ah, happy Lycius! - for she was a maid
links once again to male desire
Lamia is emotionally charged - note the concise use of poetic diction
A virgin purest lipp’d, yet in the lore
In this and the following lines to the end of the stanza, the contradictions in Lamia’s nature continue: she is at once an innocent virgin and a sexually experienced woman, who is versed in the Art of Love (ref: Ars amatoria by Ovid Book III). She is blameless – yet she is also imagined a graduate of Cupid’s College! Keats uses antithesis to create an impossible resolution to the Madonna-whore complex, as later named by Freud, which is still a relevant dilemma for men and women today.
purest - superlative
‘soon his eyes had drunk her beauty up’
‘leaving no drop in the bewildering cup’
The extended drinking metaphor in these three lines conveys the literal impossiblity of true love. The cup is ‘bewildering’ because it defies reason.
