+
RVP, Week 10
John Keats
+
“The Eve of St. Agnes” (1819)

Master-trope: action fixed in cold, formal object (statue, date,
and ultimately: poem)

Key verb tense: pluperfect (“Whose heart had brooded”)—
past action (“brooded”) expressed via a present state
(“had”)

State changes: solid into ethereal, liquids into other solutions,
kinetic action into suspended form
+
Shorter Keats Poems

‘Ode: to a Nightingale’, ‘Ode on Melancholy’, ‘Ode on a
Grecian Urn’

In groups (n/3), survey these poems

Tell us what the form of the poem is, using as many formal reading
techniques as you can

Talk about how form is thematized in the poem


This could be the poem reflecting on poetry, or on another art
form (as statue in ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’)
Bring back to us: one stanza with an unusual stress/meter/sound
effect; one moment of polyvalence, with the multiple meanings
explained conceptually
+
Some final context: Romanticism
and the French Revolution
…The French Revolution exerted a profound influence on
European art and thought. Much Romantic poetry expresses the
hope associated with the early stages of the revolution, as well as
the sense of horror and betrayal aroused by the Reign of Terror.
The main political treatises espousing different views on the
Revolution are: Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France
(voices opposition to the Revolution); and Thomas Paine’s Rights of
Man and Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(which defend revolutionary tenets). Inspired by the political
climate in France, English Romantic poets exalted the worth of the
individual, incorporating into their works such themes as universal
freedom and equality. When the Committee of Public Safety was
established as a war dictatorship, many observers believed that
the ideal of popular government had been abandoned and
Wordsworth and Coleridge registered disappointment and anger
that the goals of the French Revolution had not been fulfilled.
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate
/modules/fulllist/second/en227/context/mason
Far spread the moorey ground a level scene
Bespread with rush and one eternal green
That never felt the rage of blundering plough
Though centurys wreathed spring's blossoms on its brow
Still meeting plains that stretched them far away
In uncheckt shadows of green brown, and grey
Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene
Nor fence of ownership crept in between
To hide the prospect of the following eye
Its only bondage was the circling sky
One mighty flat undwarfed by bush and tree
Spread its faint shadow of immensity
And lost itself, which seemed to eke its bounds
In the blue mist the horizon's edge surrounds
Now this sweet vision of my boyish hours
Free as spring clouds and wild as summer flowers
Is faded all - a hope that blossomed free,
And hath been once, no more shall ever be
Inclosure came and trampled on the grave
Of labour's rights and left the poor a slave
+
Final context II: Romanticism and
Religion I
Dissenting Academies
Excluded from grammar schools and the two universities, Dissenters developed in
their own ‘academies’ an educational system that exploited their want of charter and
encouraged vigorous, independent-minded scholarship. Fundamental to the
Academies is their independence from the Church, their instituting Principals being
some of the most progressive intellects of the period, for example, John Jennings
(Kibworth), Phillip Doddridge (Northampton), James Burgh (Stoke Newington) and
most importantly, perhaps, Joseph Priestley (Warrington). Academies such as those at
Hackney and Hoxton became rather extreme in their Rational Dissent, lending some
support to Unitarian ‘heresies.’ In less controversial areas, their syllabuses were at
once extensive and comprehensive, including French, Italian, history, political theory,
geography, shorthand (compulsory in order to write sermons), a version of English
Literature and notably, the new experimental sciences. While Oxbridge remained
training colleges for priests, the Academies supported new disciplines and their
graduates often proceeded to universities in Scotland or Holland where innovative
knowledge could be further developed.
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergradu
ate/modules/fulllist/second/en227/context/mason
+
Final context II: Romanticism and
Religion II
Enthusiasm
A word that signified religious and political fanaticism,
frequently applied to Methodists, radicals and millenarians, but
also reworked and secularised by the Romantic poets to mean
the sublime inward inspiration necessary for ‘true’ poetry.
Enthusiasm was thought to connote an overheating of the brain
which caused spiritual insight or madness (and some thought
the two were the same). Women and children were thought
particularly susceptible to its lure because of their emotional
sensibility and undeveloped rationality. Wordsworth and
Coleridge, while ambivalent regarding its political and
religious associations, embraced its inspirational, imaginative
and illuminative capacities.
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergradu
ate/modules/fulllist/second/en227/context/mason
+
An Angel came to me and said: ‘O pitiable, foolish young man!
O horrible! O dreadful state! Consider the hot, burning
dungeon thou art preparing for thyself to all Eternity, to which
thou art going in such career.’ 132
I said: ‘Perhaps you will be willing to show me my eternal lot,
and we will contemplate together upon it, and see whether
your lot or mine is most desirable.’
Question for course: how is religious authority portrayed, and
what is the individual’s role in it?