Keatsの詩における女性像:蛇女Lamiaの二重性

Written in the summer of Keats's miraculous 1819, Lamia has its source in an episode in Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. A serpent-woman called Lamia falls in love with a youth called Lycius in Corinth. She asks Hermes to transform her into a fair maiden. Though she attracts him with her disguised beauty, their happy time soon ends up with boredom. He hopes to contact the real world by holding their wedding.ng. On the day of the ceremony, however, Apollonius, Lycius'teacher and philosopher, discloses the truth, leaving the shocked groom dead. The prelude of Hermes and a nymph is the poet's original, and so is the death of Lycius. The dramatization makes the story more complicated, shifting it into a tragedy of Lamia's falling from heaven to the earth. This seems to be a tragic romance between the lovers who belong to different worlds. In Keats's poetry such cases often appear: the moon goddess Cynthia and a shepherd in Endymion, Cupid and Psyche in 'Ode to Psyche', and a demonic fairy and a knight in`La Belle Dame sans Merci'. There also appears an ideal goddess Moneta who gives wisdom to the poet in The Fall of Hyperion. The representation of women in Keats's poetry seems to be conventional, having two opposite types: ideal goddesses and demonic women called “femmes fatales"who destroy men like`La Belle Dame sans Merci'. Concerniing Lamia's true self, critics have been puzzled by the intertwined story. Lamia herself is a "gordian shape",which the poet shows with the intricate device of "mirrors".Two opposite statuses -such as reality and dream, the mortal and the immortal -are reflected in them. Lamia's identity seems to be doubled with mirrors. Regarding her as demonic is seeing her half self and we need to seek another half. In this essay, I would like to review and revalue her identity, revealing the mystery and significance of Lamia's doubleness which makes her both angelic and demonic.