ENG 510 Chapter Notes - Chapter Full Text: Monomania
Document Summary
Egaeus: narrator; a bookish man/child; literally born in a library; ill of health; buried in gloom; ill with a monomania which makes him obsess over mundane objects. Berenice: egaeus"s cousin; agile, graceful, overflowing with energy; falls ill and becomes like a living corpse; suffers from epilepsy and death-like trances; egaeus removes her teeth, thinking her dead, but she comes back to life. The narrator, egaeus, tells that he was born in a library, where his mother died from childbirth. He tells that growing up, he had spent his life reading, enclosed in the gloom and quiet of books, whereas his cousin, berenice, is the complete opposite; a free, vivacious spirit. Egaeus loves the idea of this spirited berenice, seeing her as a nymph or fairy, but. Berenice falls ill and after the disease has come and gone, berenice is so changed, that the narrator knows her as berenice no longer, leaving her also suffering from epilepsy and death-like trances.
