Explore Keats’s presentation of emotion in ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ and one
other poem you have studied. You must refer to context in your
answer. (1548 words)
Throughout the course of Keats’ short lifetime, he developed a personal
philosophy of the importance of pain in our lives to forge a soul. He believed
that experiencing sorrow and anguish was integral to character-building, and
the range and depth of emotions we feel, especially those of a negative nature,
are what in essence, give us our humanity (“a world of pains and troubles is
necessary to school an intelligence and make it a soul”). This focus on the
importance of the emotional over the rational is a core Romantic belief, and
his internal exploration of this idea is echoed throughout his work. In this
essay, I will explore how Keats presents emotion in ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ and
‘When I Have Fears’.
In the Eve of St Agnes, Keats presents the emotion of human love as powerful
and all consuming, through the characterisation of Porphyro. The first
description of Porphyro we get is through the metaphor “heart on fire”.
Porphyro’s entire personality in this poem revolves around the fact that he is in
love with Madeline, to the point where he is not concerned for his own
mortality as long as he can “speak, kneel, touch, kiss” her. Madeline and his
family are archenemies, and the “whole blood- thirsty race” that are
Madeline’s relatives will kill Porphyro if they find him here (“these stones will
be thy bier”). This action of following your heart despite the consequences that
will inevitably follow is an old Romantic concept that can first be seen in ‘The
Sorrows of Young Werther’, written by German author Goethe in 1774, and
there are also evident allusions and similarities to ‘Romeo and Juliet’, written
by Shakespeare, who Keats idolised.
Keats reinforces the depth of the emotions he introduces by linking them to
colour and temperature. Porphyro is always described with a strong, bold
colour palette and even his name is a reference to the colour purple, which has
regal and opulent connotations. Porphyro and Madeline, both as individuals
and as lovers are associated with warmth: they are passion personified.
Descriptions such as “threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast” and
“unclasps her warmed jewels” provide a sharp contrast to the “bitter chill” and
“frozen grass” outside. By associating only the lovers with warmth and passion,
Keats introduces this idea that they’re the only ones experiencing life fully,
whereas everyone else is living on the periphery. There is also a continuous use
