Keats' "The Eve of St. Agnes"

Monty Python's Variation on Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"

 

Keats’ Eve of St. Agnes

Background

• St. Agnes
• the patron saint of virgins, died a martyr in fourth century Rome.
• She was condemned to be executed after being raped all night in a brothel (virgins could not be executed);
• a miraculous thunderstorm saved her from rape. St. Agnes Day is Jan. 21.
• Superstition
• a girl could see her future husband in a dream if she performed certain rites on the eve of St. Agnes; if she went to bed without looking behind her and lay on her back with her hands under her head, he would appear in her dream, kiss her, and feast with her.

Overview

• Splendid language, sharply etched setting
• For some readers, the poem lacks significance; it is a "a mere fairy-tale romance"
• Contrasts:
• ardent young love dealing with a hostile adult world
• sensuality and living vs. aging and death
• the interconnection or mixture of pain/joy
• sensuality/chastity
• revelry/penance
• warm/cold
• color/gray (or silver)
• life/death
• mortal/immortal
• the actual/the ideal
• separation/connection.

Analysis

Stanzas I-V

• opens--and closes--with the cold
• moves from the cold outside to the warmth inside
• from wild animals outside (owl, hare) to domesticated animals (sheep) to the humans inside (Beadsman, revelers).
• With the Beadsman, religious imagery is introduced (incense, censer, heaven, the Virgin Mary's picture)
• Beadsman's decision not the join the feast (rejects the present for the future)
• Madeline does the same (on what authority?)

Stanzas V-VIII

• Madeline’s separateness from the guests
• because of her total absorption in the dream (she is "thought-ful," her eyes are "regardless," and her heart "brooded," and she is "all amort").
• her belief a "whim" (stanza VII)
• she is "Hoodwink'd with faery fancy" (stanza 8)?
• Madeline, like the unshorn lambs in stanza VIII, is innocent; is it ironic that the next morning the lambs will be shorn just as Madeline will be shorn or "deflowered"?

Stanza IX-X

• Introduces Porphyro hiding in the shadows
• prefiguring his hiding in Madeline's bedroom
• His state ("heart on fire") contrasts with the dreamy remoteness of Madeline.
• What is suggested by the line, "Perhaps speak, kneel, touch, kiss--in sooth, such things have been"? Does "perhaps" leave open other possibilities?
• Love propels him into the house of dangerous enemies
• Angela, the nurse, is Porphyro's only friend
• "weak in body and in soul." In what way is she "weak in soul"?

Stanzas XI-XII

• images of ghost, fleeing, phantoms, unreality

Stanzas XIV-XVIII

• "good angels her deceive!"
• What deceptions are there in the poem?
• How do we know that Porphyro might have more on his mind? “Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose / Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart / Made purple riot; (16)
• Porphyro is described as "burning," contrasting him with
• the cold imagery of the beginning
• Madeline's cold remoteness.
• Angela acquiesces to his plan, "betide her weal or woe" (XVIII) Who is the "she" who will suffer the good or bad consequences, Angela or Madeline?

Stanza XIX

• imagery of unreality and of illusion
• "legion'd faeries"
• "pale enchantment"
• the myth of Merlin and his Demon (Whatever the specific meaning of the Merlin reference, it is clearly involves destruction and betrayal.)

Stanzas XXII-XXIII

• Madeline's entrance is associated with the moon and silver (dream/cold imagery) and unreality/illusion images ("charmed maid," "mission'd spirit," "spirits of the air"
• The nightingale allusion
• the metaphor describes Madeline's inability to talk, a part of the St. Agnes ritual,
• it also carries a hint of sexual violence or outrage.

Stanzas XXIV-XXV

• "A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings."
• refers to her royal ancestry ("blood of queens and kings")
• the shield suggests violence
• the red-blood and blush introduce color and contrast with the cold light of the moon.
• Madeline’s dream detachment
• cold and warmth
• detachment and sensuality
• religious imagery (purity)
• he watches her—she doesn’t see him because she cannot look behind

Stanzas XXVI-XXXV

• Keats dreamer:
• falls in a swoon or sleep
• experiences enchantment
• awakens to a different reality
• In stanza XXVII she is "Blissfully haven'd both from joy and pain." However, joy and pain are inescapable in life.
• Stanza XXVIII begins, "Stol'n to this paradise."
• Mix of silver/cold and color/warm images
• Mix of religious and sexual images
• Is she awake or does she sleep?

Stanzas XXXVI-XXXVIII

• Culmination
• "Into her dream he melted"; what does this mean? what does it suggest about Porphyro, Madeline, dream states?
• What is Madeline’s “waking” response?

Stanzas XXXIX-XLI

• filled with images of unreality and delusion:
• "elfin-storm from fairy land"
• "Of haggard seeming"
• "sleeping dragons all around"
• "like phantoms" (repeated twice)
• "be-nightmar'd."

Stanza XLII

• The last word in the poem is "cold," so the poem in some ways ends as it began, with cold and physical suffering.
• The lovers flee into a storm.
• Can the storm be a symbol for the real world and the reality the lovers must face?
• To what fate are the lovers fleeing?
• death?
• happiness?
• Madeline's abandonment?
• Is the reader's expectation affected by the deaths of the Beadsman and Angela and by the nightmares of the revelers?
• Does the lovers' fate matter?
• Is the reader affected by the narrator's emphasis on how long ago they fled ("ages long ago")? Whatever their fate, they have long been dead.
• Is there also a distancing effect with the insistence on them as phantoms? do they no longer seem real?

A Modern Version of the End of The Eve of St Agnes