The Eve of St Agnes

Question 1

Setting at Beginning

Answer 1

“bitter chill”
“a-cold”
“hare limp’d trembling through frozen grass”
- pathetic fallacy, cold, dark isolated winter
- ominous

Question 2

Describe how Keats makes us feel sympathy for the beadsman?

Answer 2

• “meagre, barefoot, wan”
  “slow degrees”
• asyndetic tricolon emphasises simplicity contrasts with later; slow pace

Question 3

Description of setting; sense of entrapment

Answer 3

“Emprison’d in black purgatorial rails”
- punctuation/ caesura slows the pace

Question 4

First page of poem references to death: about beadsman

Answer 4

“But no- already had his deathbell rung”
- personification
“rough ashes” - symbol of his death

Question 5

Describe the music

Answer 5

“silver, snarling trumpets ‘gan to chide”
- sibilance, implies riches + aggression
- zoomorphism

Question 6

Describe the riches of the family

Answer 6

“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

Question 7

Describe what Madeline was told about what happened upon St Agnes Eve

Answer 7

“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

Question 8

Madeline’s desire for love

Answer 8

“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

Question 9

Describe entrance of Porphyro

Answer 9

“come young Porphyro, with heart of fire For Madeline”
- youth and passion emphasised
“moonlight stands he” - linked to goddess diana; of chastity

Question 10

Predatory description of Porphyro

Answer 10

“he might gaze and worship all unseen”
- predatory
“Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss”
- desires introduced

Question 11

Porphyro’s apparent love for M

Answer 11

“or a hundred swords Will storm his heart”
“Love’s fev’rous citadel”
- metaphor city on fire (heart)

Question 12

Negative Description of Madeline’s family

Answer 12

“barbarian hordes, Hyena foeman, and hot-blooded lords” - tricolon; danger
“against his lineage” - not high born

Question 13

Initial description of Angela

Answer 13

“aged creature came”
- old contrast with young

Question 14

Angela warns P of the family

Answer 14

“here to-night, the whole blood-thirsty race!”
- potential for violence/ danger
- dialogue
- family + guests uncivilised
- divisions between families mirrors r&j

Question 15

gothic setting again as P makes his way to M’s chamber

Answer 15

“lowly arched way” “lofty plume”
“moonlight room, pale lattic’d, chill and silent as a tomb”
“languid moon”

Question 16

P thought of madeline emotional then sexual imagery

Answer 16

“his eyes grew brilliant”
“thought came like a full-blown rose”
- perhaps plans to seduce madeline
- repeated ref to rose

Question 17

Angela afraid of P: what she say

Answer 17

“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

Question 18

P says he won’t hurt her

Answer 18

“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

Question 19

How does Angela describe herself

Answer 19

“poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing. whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll”
- might die tonight

Question 20

Angela fooled by his tears will do whatever he says

Answer 20

“weal or woe”
- good or bad

Question 21

Madeline enchanted

Answer 21

“pale enchantment held her sleepy-ey’d”

Question 22

tone changes; more sinister whilst he looks at her

Answer 22

“Since Merlin paid his Demon all the monstrous debt”
- tone more sinister; P enchanted by or enchanting madeline

Question 23

Significance of reference to merlin

Answer 23

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?

Question 24

they go to her chamber

Answer 24

“maiden’s chamber, silken, hush’d and chaste”
- virginal- personified extension of her

Question 25

Description of madeline in bed: supernatural + bird reference (imp)

Answer 25

“charmed maid”
- supernatural
“like ring-dove fray’d and fled.”
- damaged
- peace: religious symbol
- ceasura
- simile suggests victim
- religious- virginity

Question 26

madelina asleep sexual imagery/ stressed

Answer 26

“she panted, all akin To spirits of the air”
“her heart, her heart was voluable”
- beating; iambic
- punctuaton: pace

Question 27

Nightingale reference to madeline

Answer 27

“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

Question 28

Significance of philomel

Answer 28

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

Question 29

P grows faint at sight of M’s virginity

Answer 29

“rose-bloom”
“silver cross soft amethyst”
“a splendid angel”
“Porphyro grew faint”
“free from mortal taint”

Question 30

focus on madeline disrobing

Answer 30

“unclasps her warmed jewels”

Question 31

Madeline’s comparison to mermaiddream

Answer 31

“like a mermaid in sea-weed”
- implies siren; fem crit; male perspective

Question 32

Madeline’s dream

Answer 32

“she dreams awake”
- male gaze; fem crit

Question 33

further bird imagery

Answer 33

“trembling in her soft and chilly nest”
- weak; fragile

Question 34

P looking at her without clothes?

Answer 34

“gaz’d upon her empty dress”

Question 35

ostentatious sense of wealth

Answer 35

“golden dishes” wreathed silver” “golden fringe”

Question 36

Madeline upset

Answer 36

“painful change” - disappointed
“began to weep”

Question 37

Madeline sees P he is not how she thought he would look

Answer 37

“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

Question 38

they have sex (i think)

Answer 38

“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

Question 39

Madeline direct speech thinks P will leave her

Answer 39

‘Porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine.”
- loves the dream version

Question 40

P worked hard to find M

Answer 40

Porphyro (direct speech) - “hours of toil and quest, A famish’d pilgrim”
- religous imagery

Question 41

Porphyro maintains mood of enchantment
- creates a sense of urgency to leave

Answer 41

“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

Question 42

Madeline goes with Porphyro

Answer 42

“she hurried at his words, beset with fears”

Question 43

imagery at the end danger of family

Answer 43

“sleeping dragons all around”
“perhaps, with ready spears-“
- danger described with mythical metaphor - family

Question 44

setting description at end creates a dangerous mood

Answer 44

“chain-droop’d lamp was flickering”
- gothic
“rich with horseman, hawk and hound”
- alliterative tricolon alludes to hunting
- predators looking down on them

Question 45

wind creating ominous mood at end

Answer 45

“flutter’d in the besieging wind’s uproar”
“gusty floor”
- emotional termoil

Question 46

reference to phatoms as end

Answer 46

“They glide, like phantoms”
“Like phantoms … they glide”
- chiasmus and similae highlights link to supernatural
- going to their death?

Question 47

Suggestion that madeline was imprisoned at the end

Answer 47

“chains lie silent” “hinges groans”

Question 48

Ending youth triumph and tragic ending for old

Answer 48

“lovers fled away into the storm”
“angela the old Died … meagre face deform”
“The Beadsman … slept among his ashes cold”