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Ligeia by Edgar Allen Poe

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Submitted By Laerkececilie
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Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe

Setting

* Abbey is placed in a wildest an unsocial region (abbey is a medieval term) * Big building, gloomy and dreary, almost savaged aspect. Huge windows in the building. Lofty rooms – high ceilings. Describes a window in a gothic way – tinted, ghastly lustre on the objects within the room. * Foreign elements: Eastern culture, arabesque, Egypt, * Draped in fabric and tapestries, gold and jetty black * The room is shaped as a pentagon in a high turret in each corner is a sarcophagus (a coffin) * Heavy materials: ebony, oak, granite * High turret gothic binaries.
Semantic scheme to describe the room: * Heavy, dark, dramatic, large, draped,
The rooms symbolic meaning: * Narrators psyche * Death and isolation * Cathedral tomb. The bridal chamber is decked as a tomb. * Satanic five star room - pentagonal

The relationship to Rowena * They don’t love – they tolerate each other * Despises her and loaths her because he misses Ligeia * Describes her looks in comparison to Ligeia: * Fair haired girl with blue eyes – the opposite of Ligeia who is a dark and gothic beauty * He likes her disaffection – he feels like a demon more than a man

Analysis with focus on exams 1. Introduction of the disposition 2. Introduction of the text 3. Gothic traits: a. The gothic setting – the symbolic meaning of the room b. The gothic binary of Ligeia and Rowena i. Things that show why this text is from the gothic period 4. Putting the text into perspective c. Poe and why this text is specific for Poe 5. Discussion of the narrators state of mind during the text Glanwill Quote – has a large meaning in relation to what happens in the story.
The ending * Rowena dies..? * Opium visions * Hears breathing * Examines corpse * Ligeia returns? * Dream? * Murderer? people are dying around him * He is on drugs * He murders Rowena as a dark ritual to get Ligeia back? * He gives Rowena a glass of wine and she dies. An invisble spring in the wine, he sees (find the quote)¨ * Ligeia could kill her off he has dreams of Ligeaia and is haunted by her
No answers are definitive. The narrator is REALLY unrealiable, so we don’t get a specific answer to how the story ends.

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