Herps in Society and Culture
Lamia by John
Keats
In 1819, John Keats wrote the poem, Lamia. An extremely short synopsis of the poem is as follows; a
beautiful snake, who is described as follows,
Lamia then gets a nymph to change her into a full human
woman. She then precedes to get a man, Lycius, to fall in love with her. When
he asks for marriage she strongly opposes because he wants to invite a
philosopher, who could see through her disguise. During their marriage,
Apollonius, the philosopher, realizes what Lamia is, he says, “And shall I see
thee made a serpent’s prey?” (Keats). At this point, Lamia disappears and the
shame of being fooled kills Lycius.
At this point one may be wondering, where is this blog post
going? The answer lies within the complex relationship between the snake and
the women that was prominent during this time period, and is still relevant
today. From Sirens, to succubus, women in literature and pop culture are
commonly portrayed as temptresses. This plays into the idea that beauty is
temptation. Usually, their main goal is to be the downfall of man. Obviously,
the connotation of this portrayal is negative. The bares striking similarities
to the typical literary representation of the serpent. Dating back to The
Bible, the image of the snake is classically seen as a universal symbol of
temptation. During the Romantic era, both of these subjects would have had a
negative connotation. In this poem, the way that Keats aligns the female with the
image of a snake represents the views of this time. Even by the diction used to
described Lamia one can see the connection he draws between the subjects. Even
though he is describing a snake, he uses words that would cause the reader to
create an image of exotic beauty. In this era, and image like this would be
considered dangerous because it is “other”. This reflects the view that snakes
are creatures that are part of the ‘original evil’, this poem is a
reinforcement of the idea that snakes are inherently evil. In the Romantic era,
most people would have been familiar with the story of the original sin, so by
using a snake-woman to cause the downfall of Lycius, Keats is warning his
audience about the dangers of beauty and temptation.
Bibliography
Keats, J. (n.d.).
Lamia. Retrieved May 01, 2017, from http://www.bartleby.com/126/36.html
1 comment:
Thanks for this interesting post!
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