The Eve of St. Agnes

Keats wrote “The Eve of St. Agnes” in 1819, the prolific year in which he wrote his great masterpieces. He would spend this year writing his six odes, as well as the narrative poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”—the early inspiration of which is Porphyro playing it for Madeline on his lute. This burst of inspiration from Keats might have come from the fact that he knew his death was not far away, having been trained as a doctor and recognizing the signs of tuberculosis eating away at his body. Death, dreams, and passion are all central themes of this poem.

This work represents the trend of longer works romanticizing myths and legends, mixing religion with the supernatural and championing doomed love. Alfred, Lord Tennyson published “The Lady of Shalott” in 1832, a retelling of a snapshot of Arthurian myth. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”) and Sir Walter Scott (“The Lady of the Lake”) both embraced this romantic narrative tradition. Although the trends of literature of the day welcomed these narrative sagas, there are clear influences from the much earlier The Faerie Queene (1590) by Edmund Spenser. Keats embraces the form and