perceant

(ˈpɜːsənt)

adj

piercing; penetrating

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

References in periodicals archive ?

Under Apollonius' "juggling" and "demon eyes" (Keats 1970: 178) which act like a potion spreading away the spell or like a spear killing a hero in a war ("the sophist's eye,/Like a sharp spear, went through her utterly,/Keen, cruel, perceant, stinging" (Keats 1970: 178), Lamia is "changed" and "withered" ("My sweet bride withers at their potency," Keats 1970: 178).

Children of the night

The catastrophe, in which "the sophist's eye / Like a sharp spear, went through her utterly, / Keen, cruel, perceant, stinging" (2:299-300), is remarkably extreme in figuring the gaze as violence, but it is also a mere development of the violence implicit in the poem's more commonplace figures for seeing.

Reading Keats to the letter: e

Indeed, the "lamia" of the previous line is, in Keats's poem, a creature of the imagination who is able to generate a self-sustaining world of aesthetic and erotic pleasure not only for herself but for others as well--for everyone except the killjoy philosopher Apollonius, with his "perceant eye." A capacious inner world of imagination opens up for the poet as a consequence of his encounter with a look that he interprets as concealing a "circle of thought" inaccessible to him.