“The Eve of St. Agnes”
“The Eve of St. Agnes”
by John Keats
THE LITERARY WORK
A poem set in England during an unspecified medieval time; published in 1820.
SYNOPSIS
A young man uses the trappings of an ancient legend to win his beloved, the daughter of a rival family.
Events in History at the Time the Poem Takes Place
Events in History at the Time the Poem Was Written
Born in 1795, John Keats was the eldest son of Thomas Keats, head stableman at a London livery stable, and of Frances Jennings, the stable owner’s daughter. Thomas Keats eventually inherited the prosperous business from his father-in-law. His son John attended Reverend John Clarke’s private school at Enfield, where he was befriended by Charles Cowden Clarke, the headmaster’s son, who encouraged John Keats’s love of reading and later introduced him to the works of great poets. When Keats was eight, his father was killed in a riding accident; his mother died of tuberculosis six years later. The four Keats children became the wards of Richard Abbey, an unscrupulous tea merchant who later embezzled the funds left in trust for the children. Abbey removed John from school at age 15 and apprenticed him to Thomas Hammond, an apothecary-surgeon in Edmondton. In 1815 Keats studied medicine at Guy’s Hospital in London, qualifying as an apothecary-surgeon the following year. But after meeting such literary figures as Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he abandoned his new profession to become a poet. Published in 1817, Keats’s first book of verse, Poems, garnered mixed reviews. His second, more ambitious work, Endymion, appeared in 1818 and was savaged by critics. Dissatisfied with Endymion himself, Keats immersed himself in other projects, determined to create a new kind of poetry that would compare favorably to the great works of William Shakespeare and John Milton. Between January and September of 1819, Keats produced most of his major poems—“The Eve of St. Agnes,” “Lamia,” “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” and the great odes, including “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” They were published the following year. Keats’s contemporaries praised “The Eve of St. Agnes” for its colorful imagery and lyrical beauty; it has since been distinguished as one of the poet’s masterpieces, perhaps his most successful narrative poem.
Events in History at the Time the Poem Takes Place
The legend of St. Agnes
Keats’s poem seems to take place sometime between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, when England was mostly Catholic and such figures as St. Agnes and St. Mark were still openly worshipped. Little is actually known about the real St. Agnes, except that she was one of the earliest Christian martyrs, who lived in Rome and was killed for her faith around 305 c.e. An early account of her martyrdom—attributed to St. Augustine of Hippo—describes Agnes as a beautiful maiden of 13 who rejected all her Roman suitors, including Eutropius, the governor’s son, for God. According to legend, the governor offered Agnes lands and honors if she would marry his son, then threatened her with torture when she refused. Unmoved, Agnes remained true to her calling and the enraged governor ordered her stripped naked and led to a brothel. But Agnes’s hair suddenly grew longer, covering her shame, and an angel appeared in the brothel and clothed her in pure white garments. Eutropius attempted to approach Agnes in the brothel but was struck blind for his offense. After curing him, Agnes was accused of witchcraft and sentenced to burn at the stake. The flames, however, would not touch her, and finally she was executed in the Roman manner by being stabbed in the throat. Her body was buried by the street Via Nomentana in Rome; a church was built over her grave circa 354.
DREAMS AND THE ROMANTIC IMAGINATION
The Romantics—writers and artists of the early nineteenth century who emphasized nature, spontaneity, and emotion in their works—were fascinated by imagination, which they believed to be the driving force behind poetic creation. Their fascination often translated into a keen interest in the nature of dreams, visions, and the supernatural, all of which were mined for inspiration. Mary Shelley, for example, drew upon a vivid nightmare to create her novel Frankenstein (also in WLAIT 3: British and Irish Literature and Its Times). Some authors even cultivated a dreamlike state by deliberately ingesting opium or laudanum; Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” was allegedly composed while the poet was in the throes of an opium delusion. Keats himself, mulling over the association between imagination and dreams, argued, “The Imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream—he awoke and found it truth” (Keats in Perkins, p. 1208). The comment was a reference to Adam’s dream of Eve’s creation in Milton’s Paradise Lost (also In WLAIT 3: British and Irish Literature and Its Times). Likewise the phenomenon he describes fits Madeline’s situation in The Eve of St. Agnes: she dreams of love and passion, and on waking experiences the reality of both.
Because of her steadfastness and purity, Agnes became the patron saint of young virgins, her feast day falling on January 21. During the early days of the Catholic Church, the prayer “Agnus Dei” (“Lamb of God”) was chanted on St. Agnes Day; two lambs were sacrificed and their wool saved to be woven by nuns. In the Middle Ages, a legend developed claiming that on St. Agnes’s Eve (January 20) a virgin could learn the identity of her future husband by fasting for 24 hours, then lying on her back in bed. Her true love would appear before her in a dream, kiss her, and feast with her. The poem turns entirely on this conceit; Keats’s heroine, Madeline, mulls over how, on St. Agnes’s Eve, “Young virgins might have visions of delight, / And soft adorings from their loves receive / Upon the honeyed middle of the night, / If ceremonies due they did aright” (Keats, “Eve of St. Agnes,” lines. 47-50). Keats emphasizes Madeline’s innocence by continually associating her with the virgin saint; he refers to her as “St. Agnes’ charmed maid” and describes how, on retiring to her chamber, she sees “in fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed” (“Eve of St. Agnes,” lines 192, 233).
Courtly love
Although “The Eve of St. Agnes” concentrates on atmosphere and emotion rather than on historical events, Keats nonetheless presents an accurate portrayal of the medieval courtly lover in the poem’s yearning hero, Porphyro. The conventions of courtly love—a predominantly aristocratic and literary phenomenon—were established in the twelfth century by a French clerk, who wrote in The Art of Courtly Love: “Love is a certain inborn suffering derived from the sight of and excessive meditation on the beauty of the opposite sex, which causes each one to wish above all things the embraces of the other and by common desire to carry out all of love’s precept in the other’s embrace” (Capellanus in Matthews, p. 60).
While these symptoms were common to both sexes, the most recognized form of courtly love involved the man’s swearing his total devotion and service to one woman, who was often not his wife. Historian Mark Girouard notes, “The accepted symbol of medieval courtly love was the knight kneeling at the feet of his mistress, as a superior and adored being.… Medieval courtly love could vary from the worship of an untouchable mistress by her adoring swain to passionately physical love affairs” (Girouard, pp. 199, 204). Keats’s depiction of Porphyro corresponds closely to these descriptions. Hiding in the shadows, the lovestruck young man “implores / All saints to give him sight of Madeline / But for one moment in the tedious hours, / That he might gaze and worship all unseen; / Perhaps speak, kneel, touch, kiss—in sooth such things have been” (“St. Agnes,” lines 77-81). Alone with Madeline, Porphyro initially maintains the same worshipful pose, declaring, “Thou art my heaven, and I thine eremite” (“St. Agnes,” lines 277). But Porphyro and Madeline’s lovemaking moves their relationship into the realm of the “passionately physical.”
Marriage and the medieval woman
While the philosophy of courtly love placed women on pedestals and depicted them almost as celestial beings, for most medieval women life was far more earthbound. The daughters of aristocratic families were destined to become either wives or nuns: “a father or a rich male relative provided an upper-class girl with either a dowry to buy her a husband or a contribution to gain her entrance into a convent” (Bornstein, p. 47). It seems logical to conclude that these are the only two options open to Madeline, who is a baron’s daughter.
Marriage during medieval times had little to do with romantic love and nearly everything to do with lands, wealth, and alliance, especially for upper-class families. Moreover, a young girl tended to wed the man selected for her by her fathers or guardian, who would be sure to settle a sizable dowry on her when she married, to preserve family dignity and pride: “Even in the lowest ranks of society a bride was expected to bring something with her besides her person when she entered her husband’s house” (Power, p. 41).
Many marriages and betrothals were arranged when both parties were in their cradles; infant heiresses were particularly desired as brides. Children could marry at the age of seven but those marriages could be voided as long as the girl was under 12 and the boy under 14. The youth of the wedded couple was not necessarily an impediment to a successful marriage; a young husband and wife started out with few preconceived ideas or preferences, and so matured together.
Chastity was a virtue husbands confidently expected from their wives.
Virginity was exalted for young girls, who were told to preserve their sexual purity and modesty before marriage. Chastity was exalted for wives, who were told to use sex only for procreation or to satisfy their husbands’ needs and to remain absolutely faithful to their husbands. Chastity was proclaimed as the most important virtue for a woman and the foundation for her honor.
(Bornstein, p. 29)
Certainly, the type of sexual experimentation of which Madeline secretly dreams in Keats’s poem would be roundly condemned in the Middle Ages, as would her disobedience in eloping with Porphyro, the suitor whose family is bitterly at odds with her own.
The Poem in Focus
Plot summary
The poem begins on a cold winter’s night—the St. Agnes’s Eve of the title—as a lone beadsman (a person praying the rosary) prays for the dead in a deserted chapel. Within the nearby Great Hall, however, a feast is being held; among the noble guests is Madeline, a beautiful young girl. In accordance with the traditions of St. Agnes, Madeline fasts and avoids speech and eye contact with her would-be suitors, hoping to see her true love in her dreams.
One ardent suitor, Porphyro, has traveled across the moors to court Madeline, despite the vicious feud that exists between their families. Angela, Madeline’s old nurse and Porphyro’s only ally, hides him from his enemies, and tells him of Madeline’s observance of St. Agnes’s customs. On learning this, Porphyro concocts a plan to enter Madeline’s chamber “and there hide / Him in a closet, of such privacy / That he might see her beauty unespied, / And win perhaps that night a peerless bride” (“St. Agnes,” lines 164-67). Initially dismayed by Porphyro’s intention to use St. Agnes’s rituals to his own advantage, Angela consents to help him after he assures her he will not harm Madeline.
Hidden in the closet, Porphyro watches, entranced, as Madeline enters her room, prays, then removes her costly clothes and jewels. Madeline climbs into bed, falls asleep, and dreams. At this point Porphyro steals from the closet and quickly prepares a sumptuous feast, then serenades Madeline with her own lute to wake her.
Awakened from her sleep, Madeline is jarred by the discontinuity between dream and reality: “There was a painful change, that nigh expell’d / The blisses of her dream, so pure and deep: / At which fair Madeline began to weep / And moan forth witless words with many a sigh” (“St. Agnes,” lines 300-303). Finding the Porphyro of the waking world to be “pallid, chill, and drear,” Madeline implores him to assume the persona of her dream lover again: “Give me that voice again, my Porphyro! / Those looks immortal, those complainings dear!” (“St. Agnes,” lines 311-13). Porphyro approaches Madeline’s bed, merging dream with reality by consummating their passion: “Into her dream he melted, as the rose / Blended its odour with the violet” (“St. Agnes,” lines 320-21).
After their sexual encounter, Madeline struggles with ambivalent feelings, fearing Porphyro’s desertion. He assures her that she is his bride and that he means to take her away with him. The lovers steal downstairs in the dark and find the revelers in a drunken sleep. Leaving their enemies behind, Porphyro and Madeline flee unhindered into the storm. The poem returns to its opening mood of silence, chill, and gloom as the revelers suffer nightmares, old Angela dies “palsy-twitch’d,” and the lone “Beadsman,” his prayers completed, “For aye unsought for” sleeps “among his ashes cold” (“St. Agnes,” lines 376, 378).
Sex and sexuality
In Keats’s own time, upper-class sexual attitudes and practices were undergoing change. From around 1670 to 1810 society had adopted a generally permissive, indulgent attitude toward sensual pleasure. Encouraging this attitude was the spread of Protestantism, which disagreed with the Catholic idea that sexual relations should be for procreation only. According to the Protestant view, marriage partners owed each other mutual comfort, and this involved sexual satisfaction. Other developments of the century also contributed to the trend, among them the ideas of French philosophers—such as Claude Adrien Helvitius (1715-71)—who held that passion and pleasure should be the guiding principles of life. Also influential were the writings of English philosopher John Locke. Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding (also in WLAIT 3: British and Irish Literature and Its Times) stressed the importance of sensation to human knowledge, a notion that many of Locke’s readers accepted and then connected to physical as well as emotional and mental experiences.
Discarding former inhibitions, people began to openly acknowledge the needs of the human body. The eighteenth century saw pornography become openly popular for the first time. Originally published in 1773, Covent Garden Magazine or Amorous Repository printed not only sexually titillating stories but also the advertisements of prostitutes. In 1795 The Ranger’s Magazine, or the Man of Fashion’s Companion began publication, printing a monthly list of prostitutes, descriptions of court cases having to do with adultery, and other such news. Pornographic pictures also found their way into respectable society, with the English caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson producing such prints for the Prince Regent around 1812.
In the 1770s, The Lady’s Magazine warned its female readers that although sexual attraction was transitory, it was integral to marriage and an aspect of the union that the wife should strive to maintain. However, this same decade saw the beginning of a backlash in the form of newly repressive attitudes towards sex. These attitudes gained force and spread rapidly in the early 1800s. Segregation of the sexes was encouraged in many social situations, to shield virtuous women from possible corruption. Indeed the old language of courtly love would not have seemed amiss in certain nineteenth-century circles. “Men spoke of the women they respected as superhuman, angelic beings, pure and untainted, uncorrupted by any stain of vice.… [I]t was only natural for men to want to keep them pure by screening them off from contamination. Hence … the increasing segregation of women from worldly pastimes” (Erickson, p. 191). Keats himself came into conflict with this particular way of thinking. While writing about the controversial sexual encounter between Porphyro and Madeline in “The Eve of St. Agnes,” he argued with friends about how explicit this passage should be. At one point, he wrote three additional stanzas providing more details of Porphyro and Madeline’s lovemaking; his friend Richard Woodhouse reacted negatively, declaring that the alteration would “render the poem unfit for ladies, & indeed scarcely to be mentioned to them among the ‘things that are’” (Woodhouse in Hill, p. 60). Keats heatedly responded that “he [should] despise a man who would be such a eunuch in sentiment as to leave a maid, with that Character about her, in such a situation and [should] despise himself to write about it” (Woodhouse in Hill, p. 60). He furthermore argued that Porphyro merely behaved as any normal man would when confronted by Madeline’s beauty. Ultimately, however, Keats followed his friends’ advice and left the description of the encounter more ambiguous.
In either version, “The Eve of St. Agnes” grapples with thorny issues of maturity and sexuality. The young lovers, Porphyro and Madeline, are caught in the age-old dance between men and women, desiring yet fearing to claim their adult sexuality. Porphyro’s conduct is particularly ambiguous—at first, he desires only to “kneel, touch, kiss”, but once hidden in Madeline’s closet, he becomes a voyeur, secretly watching the object of his desire undress:
Anon his heart revives; her vespers done,
Of all its wreathed pearlsher hair she frees;
Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;
Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees.”
(“St. Agnes,” lines 81, 226-230)
Later, spreading out the St. Agnes feast and singing in Madeline’s ear to awaken her, he is as much seducer as would-be suitor, manipulating old legends to suit his purpose.
Madeline’s own behavior is also somewhat problematic. Literary critic Jack Stillinger contends, “There are reasons why we ought not entirely to sympathise with Madeline. She is a victim of deception, to be sure, but of deception not so much by Porphyro as by herself and the superstition she trusts in” (Stillinger in Hill, p. 157). Stillinger draws attention to a stanza Keats decided to omit from the final printed version of the poem; in this verse, Madeline anticipates “a dizzy stream” of pleasures—“palpable almost”—in her dream, but fully expects “to wake again / Warm in the virgin morn, no weeping Magdalen” (Keats, p. 214, note 6). While Madeline follows St. Agnes Eve rituals in hopes of receiving a vision of her future husband, it is the vision, not the reality, she appears to desire most. She wants to experience the pleasures but not the consequences of sexual experience. Her reaction to the loss of her virginity is mixed, at best:
No dream, alas! alas! and woe is mine!
Porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine.—
Cruel! what traitor could thee hither bring?
I curse not, for my heart is lost in thine,
Though thou forsakest a deceived thing;—
A dove forlorn and lost with sick unpruned wing.
(“St. Agnes”, lines 328-33)
“A TEMPEST FELL”: WHAT KEATS LEFT OUT
See while she speaks his arms encroaching slow Have zoned her, heart to heart,—loud, loud, the dark winds blow!…
For on the midnight came a tempest fell;
More sooth, for that his quick rejoinder flows
Into her burning ear and still the spell
Unbroken guards her in serene repose.
With her wild dream he mingled as the rose
Marrieth its odour to a violet.
Still, still she dreams, louder the frost wind blows!
(Keats in Stillinger, p, 457)
Seduced and believing herself deceived, Madeline fears abandonment by her lover; Porphyro’s promises of marriage and a new home quell those fears, but significantly, Keats provides no guarantee of “happily ever after” for these lovers, whose tale ends with their flight into “an elfin-storm from faery land” (“St. Agnes,” line 343).
Sources and literary context
Keats first received the idea for his poem from a friend, Isabella Jones, who told him about the legend of St. Agnes’s Eve. He brooded over the story for some time, drawing inspiration from many different sources: Spenser’s The Faerie Queen (also in WLAIT 3: British and Irish Literature and Its Times), numerous Gothic tales, and three French romances—“Flores et Blanche-Fleur,” “Cleo-mades et Claremonde,” and “Pierre de Provence et la Belle Maguelone.” These diverse influences all shaped the finished poem; told in the graceful nine-line stanzas made famous in Spenser’s epic, “The Eve of St. Agnes” relates a tale of feuding families and star-crossed love reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet, rich with imagery evoking both the modern Gothic and the medieval.
SPENSER AND THE ROMANTICS
Edmund Spenser, the Elizabethan poet, experienced a renaissance of his own when his epic romance The Faerie Queen was reprinted nine times during the eighteenth century. Many Romantics thrilled to the adventures of Spenser’s Redcrosse Knight and other courtly heroes and heroines. However, Spenser’s most visible legacy to the Romantics seems to be the elaborate stanza he devised for his romance. The Spenserian stanza is nine lines long with an interlocking rhyme scheme—ababbcbcc; the first eight lines are written in iambic pentameter, and the ninth line contains an extra iambic foot, called an Alexandrine. Many Romantics were fascinated by this metrical form and attempted to use it in their own works. Keats’s “The Eve of St. Agnes,” Shelley’s Adonais, and Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage were all composed in Spenserian stanzas.
Keats’s composition of “The Eve of St. Agnes” also grew out of the “medieval revival” in painting, architecture, and literature, which gained momentum during the Romantic period (c. 1789-1832). Throughout much of the eighteenth century, the Middle Ages and everything connected to them—art, history, and literature—were held in disdain by “modern” Englishmen, who were quick to condemn the supposed barbarism and violence of their medieval past, expressing their preference for the rational temperament and polished manners of the present day. Nonetheless, a growing fascination with medievalism began at the end of the century. At first, this fascination took mostly an antiquarian turn, with historical enthusiasts seeking physical artifacts of the Middle Ages, such as manuscripts and ancient ruins. Medieval antiquarians played a significant role in resurrecting Gothic architecture, which made a comeback in the eighteenth century. While the Gothic revival had its ludicrous moments, such as the craze for sham ruins created by landowners seeking to add a picturesque note of decay to their estates, it also fueled further interest in medieval history, literature, and life. Literary scholar Alice Chandler observes, “The very irregularity, asymmetry, and plenitude of Gothic architecture came to be a sign of its organic structure and thus of its closeness to nature. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, medieval people became associated with the natural and thereby with the heroic, the vital, and the creative” (Chandler, p. 9). To supremely jaded denizens of the super-rational eighteenth-century, medieval people “were thought to be closer to their feelings and freer and more unconstrained than modern man” (Chandler, p. 9).
Given the Romantics’ attraction to nature, to which they turned for solace after witnessing increasing industrialism and the horrors of a violent revolution in France, it was perhaps inevitable that they should eventually be drawn to the vigor and freedom they perceived in the Middle Ages. Reprintings of such medieval romances as Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur (also in WLAIT 3: British and Irish Literature and Its Times) and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, inspired many nineteenth-century authors to compose works set in medieval times and works rich with period details. Chief among such writings were the wildly popular historical novels of Sir Walter Scott (see Rob Roy , also in WLAIT 3: British and Irish Literature and Its Times). Coleridge, too, used medieval settings and atmosphere in such poems as “Christabel” and the lesser known “Ballad of the Dark Ladie.” Keats’s “The Eve of St. Agnes” likewise strove for an atmospheric effect, concentrating mainly on evoking the rich textures and colors of medieval times, as in the description of Madeline’s chamber window:
A casement high and triple-arch’d there was
All garlanded with carven imag’ries
Of fruits and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
And diamonded with panes of quaint device
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes.
(“St. Agnes,” lines 208-212)
Keats’s direct appeal to the readers’ senses, as in his mouthwatering descriptions of the “jellies soother than the creamy curd, / And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon” that Porphyro provides for the feast, remain his most striking contribution to this tradition of neo-medievalist literature (“St. Agnes,” lines 266-67).
Events in History at the Time the Poem Was Written
Courtship, marriage, and sex in nineteenth-century England
While less colorful or romantic than Porphyro and Madeline’s flight across the moors, elopements did, in fact, take place in the England of Keats’s day. Eager couples who wished to avoid formalities or expenditures—such as marriage licenses—could travel to the village of Gretna Green in Scotland and simply pledge themselves to each other in the presence of a witness, usually the village blacksmith. Despite being perfectly legal, marriage “over the anvil” was considered more improper than romantic and the custom would be curbed somewhat when a 21-day residency requirement before marriage was imposed in 1856.
In general, however, courtship and marriage tended to be more prosaically handled in Keats’s time. A young girl of the middle to upper classes generally came “out” into society when she was 17 or 18; families that could afford such extravagances usually tried to give their daughters a “London season.” Beginning after Easter, the “season” was “a dizzying three-month whirl of parties, balls, and social events” that, for many, “revolved around the deadly serious business of marrying off the young girls of the family to eligible and wealthy young men” (Pool, p. 52). A girl might have more than one season if her family’s budget could afford it, but if she had not secured an offer of marriage within two or three seasons, she was considered a failure. A woman still unmarried by 30 was regarded as “on the shelf” and doomed to remain a spinster.
Men seeking wives took the marriage market quite seriously and were careful not to commit themselves until they were certain of their choice. Dancing with the same young woman more than twice at a ball could be considered tantamount to a declaration of marriage or, at least, serious romantic intent. Unmarried men and women also attempted to avoid being found together un-chaperoned, lest their decisions be made for them by the possible scandal.
After a man proposed, he was expected to inform the parents of his future bride of his intentions, and acquaint them with his own financial circumstances and ability to provide for his wife. His future bride’s parents, in turn, were obligated, to the best of their knowledge, to state their daughter’s own fortune—which became the husband’s property after marriage. Financial considerations were important to both families. Lawyers acting on behalf of the bride and groom would habitually negotiate a marriage settlement, addressing such concerns as spending money (“pin money”) for the wife, “portions” for future children, and a “jointure”—in the form of money or property—to be bequeathed to the wife on her husband’s death. These transactions would take place well before the engaged couple walked down the aisle.
The marriage itself could be carried out in several ways, through the publishing of banns—an inexpensive procedure in which the couple’s wedding was announced three Sundays in a row from the parish pulpit—or through the acquisition of a marriage license from a local clergyman, which would allow a couple to marry in any parish in which one of them had lived for 15 days. The well-to-do could also pay for a special license from the archbishop of Canterbury that allowed a couple to marry anywhere and anytime.
While the nineteenth-century middle-to upper-class Englishman was often sexually experienced before marriage—many engaged in affairs with domestic servants and prostitutes—his female counterpart was raised to be innocent and ignorant of such matters.
In proper middle-and upper-class circles, for example, women were supposed to have no sexual contact before marriage—a hand around the waist, a kiss, and a fervent pressing of the hand was probably the accepted limit in most cases.… The consequence of this prudery was that women often came to their wedding nights ignorant and terrified. (Pool, p. 187)
The sexual double standard became only more pronounced as the century progressed. During the imminent Victorian age (1837-1901), daughters got little if any advice from their middle-and upper-class mothers on what to expect on their wedding nights.
The youngest Romantic
Along with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley, Keats is considered one of the major poets of the Romantic period. As the youngest and perhaps the most impressionable of the Romantics, Keats entered into various debates regarding poetry’s true purpose, formulating and revising numerous theories. He was “astonishingly quick to enter with gusto into ideas, to explore them by adopting and believing in them, however transiently” (Perkins, p. 1116). Throughout his brief career as a poet, Keats experimented with different aesthetics and approaches, perhaps seeking a synthesis between the objective grandeur of older models—namely, Shakespeare and Milton—with the subjective introspection and intuition of Wordsworth and other Romantic writers. By 1820—the year in which “The Eve of St. Agnes” was published—Keats had clarified particular insights that characterize much of his major work. One literary historian observes:
The strength of [Keats’s later] poems is that they give complete and powerful expression to the natural human longing for a better world, a more perfect love, a lasting intensity of happiness, and yet they also remain faithful to the critical intelligence that forces us to acknowledge that dreams are only dreams and that in the sole world we know values are tragically in conflict. (Perkins, pp. 1117-18)
Reviews
“The Eve of St. Agnes” was included for publication in Keats’s 1820 volume, entitled Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems. Unlike Endymion, this collection met with a mostly favorable reception; an anonymous critic writing for the Monthly Review declared, “This little volume must and ought to attract attention, for it displays the ore of true poetic genius, though mingled with a large portion of dross” (Schwartz, p. 202). Several reviewers noted the new direction Keats appeared to be taking in his work. The poet Leigh Hunt, Keats’s acquaintance, wrote in The Indicator that Keats had reached his prime: “The author’s versification is now perfected, the exuberances of his imagination restrained, and a calm power, the surest and loftiest of all power, takes place of the impatient workings of the younger god within him.… Mr. Keats undoubtedly takes his seat with the oldest and best of our living poets” (Hunt in Schwartz, p. 227).
Among the individual poems in the volume, much attention was devoted to Keats’s Miltonic poem, “Hyperion” (inspired by Milton’s epic, Paradise Lost), and the Grecian romance, “Lamia.” However, “The Eve of St. Agnes” was also singled out for its richness and beauty. In his review, Hunt quoted the verses describing Madeline kneeling in prayer before a stained glass window and exclaimed, “Is not this perfectly beautiful?” (Hunt in Schwartz, p. 223). A critic for the Monthly Magazine was likewise impressed by this “exquisite scene,” noting, “A soft religious light is shed over the whole story” (Schwartz, p. 261).
It was during the Victorian Age (1837-1901), however, that “The Eve of St. Agnes” came into its own, along with Keats’s own poetic reputation. The poet Algernon Charles Swinburne observed that “[The Eve of St. Agnes] stands out among all famous poems as a perfect and unsurpassable study in pure colour and clear melody” (Swinburne in Hill, p. 62). And William Michael Rossetti, brother to painter-poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and poet Christina Rossetti and one of Keats’s early biographers, declared, “The power of ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’… lies in the delicate transfusion of making sight and emotion into sound.… Perhaps no reader has ever risen from ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ dissatisfied” (Rossetti in Hill, pp. 63-64).
—Pamela S. Loy
For More Information
Bate, Walter Jackson. John Keats. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1963.
Bornstein, Diane. The Lady in the Tower: Medieval Courtesy Literature for Women. Hamden: Archon, 1983.
Erickson, Carolly. Our Tempestuous Day: A History of Regency England. New York: William Morrow, 1986.
Girouard, Mark. The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.
Hill, John Spencer. Keats: The Narrative Poems. London: Macmillan, 1983.
Keats, John. “The Eve of St. Agnes.” The Works of John Keats. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1994.
Matthews, John. The Arthurian Tradition. Shaftesbury: Elemental Books, 1994.
Perkins, David, ed. English Romantic Writers. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1967.
Pool, Daniel. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox-Hunting to Whist—the Facts of Daily Life in 19th-century England. New York: Touchstone, 1993.
Power, Eileen. Medieval Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Schwartz, Lewis M., ed. Keats Reviewed by His Contemporaries: A Collection of Notices from the Years 1816-1821. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1973.
Stillinger, Jack, ed. Complete Poems by John Keats. Cambridge: Bellknap, 1978.
Stone, Lawrence. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.