English 375 —British Romanticism 1770-1830

Professor
J. Jennifer Jones

DIRECTIONS

Please answer the following questions. While your responses may be informal, they should be typed and citations should conform with MLA style. If you receive an A on this analysis, then I will substitute an A for your lowest quiz score. If you receive a grade of B or C on this analysis, I will give you credit for one missed class. Good luck! Keats is an amazing poet and this is an amazing poem. Enjoy!

MYTHICAL BACKGROUND OF THE POEM:

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; however, a miraculous thunderstorm saved her from rape. St. Agnes Day is Jan. 21.

Keats based this poem on the superstition that 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.

1. On Sensuality of Keats:
W.B. Yeats once described Keats as “a boy with his face pressed to the window of a sweet-shop.” Why, do you think? Where do you discern sensuality in this poem?

2. On Contrasts of Opposites:
The poem works through a series of contrasts in imagery. What contrasts do you trace in the poem? What effect(s) do these series of contrasts produce? Do they get resolved?

3. Images of cold, and the ways they frame the narrative in various ways:

a.) The poem begins with an intricate description of how cold the night is and consequently how cold the church and the Beadsman are. This introductory image is only the first of many images of cold that occur throughout this poem. Name as many of these images as you can and explain how they affect the overall narrative and experience of the poem.

b.) In this regard, consider stanza XXXII, in which the speaker of the poem characterizes Madeline's dream as follows: "Shaded was her dream / By the dusk curtains:--'twas a midnight charm / Impossible to melt as iced stream." Why is it significant that the speaker metaphorically equates dreaming with freezing? to melt”. How? The latter is impenetrable. The other betrays the fragility and pain of the realm of reality, the world.

4. What images most starkly contrast with the imagery of silver, moon, and cold?

5. What are the most violent images you recall from “Eve”? Are they aligned either with images of cold or heat?

6. The Keatsian “altered state”

Does Madeline wake to find her dream real, or does she wake disconcerted by the distinctiveness – the essential difference – between the (the dream state and the waking state)? In this instance, should we read her experience as a visionary mode of consciousness or as illusion and self deception (or deception by another, for that matter)?

[How Keats represents altered states in Lamia will be a central question toward which we will tend in our pilgrimage through this poem, so keep it in mind.]

7. The ending of “Eve” is one of the most delicious ambiguities I’’ve ever encountered. Does it mean that youth, innocence, and beauty overcome the jadedness and hostility of experience, and flee the haunted castle to live happily ever after? Or is it youth/innocence itself that is overcome by the foolish urge of the young lovers to rush into the “storm” of experience, age, and death? Or something else altogether? You should look closely at every point of the poem in trying to decide and make as strong a case as you can for your answer.