the eve of st agnes

Question 1

tragic hero

Answer 1

porphyro could be read as tragic hero as he is the idealised knight who rescues Madeline from ‘barbarian hordes’

Question 2

porphyro as hero/villain

Answer 2

-‘across the moors/had come young porphyro, with heart on fire/ for Madeline’
-‘he ventures in - let no buzzed whisper tell (…) or a hundred swords/ will storm his heart, loves fev’rous citadel’
-‘for him, those chambers held barbarian hordes’
-‘into her dream he melted’
-‘these lovers fled away into the storm’

Question 3

stanza structure

Answer 3

spenserian stanzas - 8 lines of iambic pentameter followed by 1 line of iambic hexameter (12 syllables)

Question 4

stanza 1 notes

Answer 4

used to set the atmosphere - deathly, dark, religious

Question 5

stanza 4 notes

Answer 5

movement and noise of the party contrasts with the mood of the early stanzas.
action is talking place in another part of the castle

Question 6

stanza 5 notes

Answer 6

sense of bustle and movement

Question 7

notes on language in stanza 36

Answer 7

high concentration of natural imagery which gives positive connotations. this contrasts with the later negativity surrounding her reputation

Question 8

notes on madeline and porphyros speech in stanza 37

Answer 8

the first and third lines both begin with ‘tis dark’, and this parallel speech shows their unity. this comes straight after they have sex and after the storm starts, so this may represent how they will both suffer the negative consequences

Question 9

notes on frequent use of personal pronoun in stanza 31

Answer 9

the repetition of the personal pronoun ‘I’ shows that he believes he is in control of her, as this would’ve been the status of a man in this society

Question 10

notes on extreme and hyperbolic language in stanza 31

Answer 10

much of porphyros speech is hyperbolic which would be typical of a ‘larger than life’ tragic hero

Question 11

significance of less religious imagery when they are together

Answer 11

religious imagery decreases and more romantic to show their love but also present that their relationship disobeys typical religious rules? madeline and porphyro are young and naive

Question 12

notes about high concentration of caesuras in stanza 36

Answer 12

slows the pace down to give a sense of sleepiness and drownsiness

Question 13

notes on the language in stanza 35

Answer 13

lots of positive lexis, and the whole stanza in her speech

Question 14

notes on stanza 39

Answer 14

high concentration of caesuras to create suspense (stanza where they are escaping). there are also several exclamations to create a sense of urgency and suspense.

Question 15

notes on the death of angela and the beadsman

Answer 15

neither of the die a nice death, ‘angela… / died palsy-twitch, with meagre face deform’ and the beadsman ‘slept among his ashes cold’, the beadsman gives the poem more of a cyclical nature, further reinforcing all the foreshadowing and inevitability in the rest of the poem. Additionally, their deaths may be intended to foreshadow the deaths of the lovers, as they are both two sets of outsiders and so their fates may be interlinked, as both of them are isolated. this further shows tragic inevitability

Question 16

notes on stanza 41

Answer 16

there is a shift to the present tense here to make it more immediate and therefore more tense. there are also lots of caesuras which also contribute to the tension created by the language.

Question 17

context

Answer 17

-the patron saint of virgins and rape survivors
-died a martyr in 4th century rome
-eve falls on 20th january
-feast day is the 21st
-the son of a roman prefect wanted to marry this beautiful christian girl. she refused as she wanted to devote her life to religious purity she was denounced and executed