Lycanthropy as a medical condition.
The fact that the original title of the poem was “Insanity” but then later changed to “The Maniac”
Robinson stylizes the figure of the maniac with animalistic characteristics.
Nymph, Werewolf, Medusa – all subjects of mortality.
Nymphs. Young girls. Personifications of natural places and powers, they are often lusty beings who inhabit wild places and accompany greater gods or goddesses.
Medusa.
“In the nineteenth century, medusa was a symbol used by the Romantics, who considered her a mysterious, fascinating Dark Woman and the personification of Death.” (405).
The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters. By Andrew Weinstock.
The fascination she arouses has been translated into a sympathetic process because she is the symbol of victimization, of a beauty cursed through no fault of her own anywhere evident in the myth, the painting, or the poem. Moreover, she impresses forever upon the sympathetic observer the very essence and source of her dazzling beauty: her image is sculptured on the gazer's soul, which is turned to receptive stone; or, alternatively, the melody of her musical beauty, the painted hues of her exquisitely rendered likeness, both become part of the gazer's now humanized and harmonized life. The stanza asserts, in other words, the transference of the creative power of the imagination from the Medusa to the sympathizing gazer. …show more content…
(175).