The Eve of St Agnes Flashcards
Setting at Beginning
“bitter chill”
“a-cold”
“hare limp’d trembling through frozen grass”
- pathetic fallacy, cold, dark isolated winter
- ominous
Describe how Keats makes us feel sympathy for the beadsman?
- “meagre, barefoot, wan”
“slow degrees” - asyndetic tricolon emphasises simplicity contrasts with later; slow pace
Description of setting; sense of entrapment
“Emprison’d in black purgatorial rails”
- punctuation/ caesura slows the pace
First page of poem references to death: about beadsman
“But no- already had his deathbell rung”
- personification
“rough ashes” - symbol of his death
Describe the music
“silver, snarling trumpets ‘gan to chide”
- sibilance, implies riches + aggression
- zoomorphism
Describe the riches of the family
“argent revelry” - contrast to beadsman; party contrast to lonely man
“plume, tiara, and all rich array”
“numerous shadows haunting faerily”
“youth, with triumphs gay”
- suggests enchantment
Describe what Madeline was told about what happened upon St Agnes Eve
“Young virgins might have visions of delight, And soft adorings from their loves”
“upon the honey’d middle of the night”
“lily white” - purity
- look to “Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire”
- sensuous lang, sexual connotations
Madeline’s desire for love
“The music, yearning like a God in pain” - desire; ominous
“she sigh’d for Agnes’ dreams, the sweetest of the year”
- interested in true love
Describe entrance of Porphyro
“come young Porphyro, with heart of fire For Madeline”
- youth and passion emphasised
“moonlight stands he” - linked to goddess diana; of chastity
Predatory description of Porphyro
“he might gaze and worship all unseen”
- predatory
“Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss”
- desires introduced
Porphyro’s apparent love for M
“or a hundred swords Will storm his heart”
“Love’s fev’rous citadel”
- metaphor city on fire (heart)
Negative Description of Madeline’s family
“barbarian hordes, Hyena foeman, and hot-blooded lords” - tricolon; danger
“against his lineage” - not high born
Initial description of Angela
“aged creature came”
- old contrast with young
Angela warns P of the family
“here to-night, the whole blood-thirsty race!”
- potential for violence/ danger
- dialogue
- family + guests uncivilised
- divisions between families mirrors r&j
gothic setting again as P makes his way to M’s chamber
“lowly arched way” “lofty plume”
“moonlight room, pale lattic’d, chill and silent as a tomb”
“languid moon”
P thought of madeline emotional then sexual imagery
“his eyes grew brilliant”
“thought came like a full-blown rose”
- perhaps plans to seduce madeline
- repeated ref to rose
Angela afraid of P: what she say
“a cruel man and impious thou art” - unreligious
“let her pray, sleep and dream” - polysyndetic structure emphasises her innonence
“alone with her good angels, far apart from wicked men like thee”
- needs to be protected
P says he won’t hurt her
“believe me by these tears”
“my foemen’s ears, And beard them, though they be more fang’d than wolves and bears”
- romantic lang; desire
- emotional
- animalistic dangerous - excuse
- unreliable narrator
How does Angela describe herself
“poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing. whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll”
- might die tonight
Angela fooled by his tears will do whatever he says
“weal or woe”
- good or bad
Madeline enchanted
“pale enchantment held her sleepy-ey’d”
tone changes; more sinister whilst he looks at her
“Since Merlin paid his Demon all the monstrous debt”
- tone more sinister; P enchanted by or enchanting madeline
Significance of reference to merlin
Intertextual reference to Arthurian legend - Nimue the witch trapped and seduced Merlin into a cave where he died - ironic inversion of characterisations? - arguable that Porphryo causes Madelaine’s potential demise?
they go to her chamber
“maiden’s chamber, silken, hush’d and chaste”
- virginal- personified extension of her
Description of madeline in bed: supernatural + bird reference (imp)
“charmed maid”
- supernatural
“like ring-dove fray’d and fled.”
- damaged
- peace: religious symbol
- ceasura
- simile suggests victim
- religious- virginity
madelina asleep sexual imagery/ stressed
“she panted, all akin To spirits of the air”
“her heart, her heart was voluable”
- beating; iambic
- punctuaton: pace
Nightingale reference to madeline
“As though a tongueless nightingale should swell her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled in her dell”
- classiscal illusion
- predator-prey
- myth of philomel
- rapy
Significance of philomel
Implicit classical intertextual reference - Philomel was raped by her brother-in-law Theres of Thrace - to prevent her from telling others he cut out her tongue - image of extreme male violence and oppression - evokes ominous tone that frames our reading and understanding of the relationship between Madelaine and Porphyro
P grows faint at sight of M’s virginity
“rose-bloom”
“silver cross soft amethyst”
“a splendid angel”
“Porphyro grew faint”
“free from mortal taint”
focus on madeline disrobing
“unclasps her warmed jewels”
Madeline’s comparison to mermaiddream
“like a mermaid in sea-weed”
- implies siren; fem crit; male perspective
Madeline’s dream
“she dreams awake”
- male gaze; fem crit
further bird imagery
“trembling in her soft and chilly nest”
- weak; fragile
P looking at her without clothes?
“gaz’d upon her empty dress”
ostentatious sense of wealth
“golden dishes” wreathed silver” “golden fringe”
Madeline upset
“painful change” - disappointed
“began to weep”
Madeline sees P he is not how she thought he would look
“thy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear”
“How chang’d thou art! how pallid, chill and drear!”
- ugly, grim
- cold of real world vs dreamy vision
they have sex (i think)
“he arose, Ethereal, flush’d, and like a throbbing star”
“into her dream he melted”
“rose blendeth its odour with the violet”
- sexuality + modesty linked
- “St Agnes’s moon hath set” - virginity gone
Madeline direct speech thinks P will leave her
‘Porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine.”
- loves the dream version
P worked hard to find M
Porphyro (direct speech) - “hours of toil and quest, A famish’d pilgrim”
- religous imagery
Porphyro maintains mood of enchantment
- creates a sense of urgency to leave
“Hark! ‘tis an elfin-storm from faery land”
“Arise -arise!”
- repetition of punctuation creates growing pace; need to beat the storm; not aware of danger
Madeline goes with Porphyro
“she hurried at his words, beset with fears”
imagery at the end danger of family
“sleeping dragons all around”
“perhaps, with ready spears-“
- danger described with mythical metaphor - family
setting description at end creates a dangerous mood
“chain-droop’d lamp was flickering”
- gothic
“rich with horseman, hawk and hound”
- alliterative tricolon alludes to hunting
- predators looking down on them
wind creating ominous mood at end
“flutter’d in the besieging wind’s uproar”
“gusty floor”
- emotional termoil
reference to phatoms as end
“They glide, like phantoms”
“Like phantoms … they glide”
- chiasmus and similae highlights link to supernatural
- going to their death?
Suggestion that madeline was imprisoned at the end
“chains lie silent” “hinges groans”
Ending youth triumph and tragic ending for old
“lovers fled away into the storm”
“angela the old Died … meagre face deform”
“The Beadsman … slept among his ashes cold”
