1. ‘Lamia’
10 minutes to complete your
annotations of your assigned part of
section 2.
AO2 – Language, structure, form
Time and sequence
Characters and characterisation
Destination
Point of view
Voices
Scenes, places, setting

2. Themes
• To what extent do we see the following
themes explored in ‘Lamia’?
– Imagination
– Truth and beauty ‘Negative Capability’ is
the ability to
– Negative capability contemplate the world
without the desire to try
– Nature to reconcile its
contradictory aspects, or
– Women fit it into closed and
rational systems

3. Imagination Beauty and truth
• The imagination provides a • In his early work, Keats
link between the real and believed that beauty must
the ideal. be the some manifestation
• Irreconcilable ideas: the of an ultimate truth – this is
imagination embodied by undermined in later work.
Lamia’s palace gives access • Keat’s growing awareness of
to something beautiful evil and suffering change his
which is threatened by the opinion and views about
public world of fact and this.
duty. At the same time, • Images of suffering and the
imagination is shown as illusion of beauty in ‘Lamia’.
dangerous as it tempts us
away from this world.

4. Negative capability Nature
• Does Keats answer the • Keats is exploring aspects of
questions regarding human nature, but through
truthfulness and what love the use of non-human
is? characters – therefore does
• The contradictory elements he bring the reader to any
of the story of ‘Lamia’ are conclusions?
not reconciled. • Exploration of the desire to
have human nature.
• Contrasts between the
dream-like world of the
palace and the reality of
Corinth.

5. Women
• Keats’ deepest anxieties are revealed through
confrontations with power represented in the female form.
• The effect of the female upon the male is often described
in his poetry using terms like “enthrall” and “ensnare”,
simultaneously suggesting both attraction and fear.
• The temptation to escape the responsibility of adulthood is
often projected on to an entrapping female – Keats’
recognition that this temptation must be resisted is
suggested by the way he punishes the male lovers.
• ‘Lamia’ is a variation of this theme where the woman is not
only a temptation to leave the world of duty and
responsibility but is also destroyed by this world. Why is it
significant that Lamia’s concealed identity is that of a
serpent?

6. How does Keats tell the story in lines 350 – 397 of ‘Lamia’?
Authorial methods need to be related to the story being told in
this section of the poem.
Possible content:
• narrative perspective/voices: omniscient sympathetic narrator, use of
dramatic voices – Lamia, Lycius, interaction of the two – questions and
answers, narratorial distancing at the end, etc. (language and form)
• setting: pastoral landscape, classical world, Corinth, a ‘once upon a time’
world, house of Lycius, night time, etc. (language and form)
• a section at the end of Part 1 of a longer narrative poem written in heroic
couplets, etc. (structure)
• linear chronology, begins as the couple arrive in Corinth, leads to the
encounter with Apollonius and Lamia’s fear and ends with the narrator’s
hint about the way the story is to develop, etc. (structure)
• elevated poetic language, use of descriptive detail, emotive language, use
of direct speech, sensuous detail, use of colour and shape, exotic imagery,
use of names, use of the poetic apostrophe, repetition, accumulation of
detail, use of adjectives, classical references, inversion of word order, use
of contrast, time references, etc. (language, structure, form)