The Eve of St. Agnes | Aspects of Tragedy

the type of tragic text

• classical tragedy

• Aristotlean

• Romantic gothic Medieval ballad

the inevitability of fate

• death = inevitable = fate

• forbidden love

• powerful storm

• naïve tragic protagonists

• ‘already had his deathbell rung’

• ‘my lady fair the conjuror plays’

• did Madeline summon Porphyro?

• ‘she still beheld, now wide awake, the vision of her sleep’

pride & folly

• Porphyro’s belief in love

• naïvety 

• lack of control

• ‘Porphyro, with heart on fire’

• ‘Stol’n to this paradise’

• Porphyro’s arrogance

blindness & insight

• Porphyro’s myopic behaviour

• lack of anagnorisis

• idealism vs. reality

• ‘Blissfully haven’d both from joy and pain’

• ‘‘tis an elfin-storm from faery land, […] but a boon indeed’

discovery

• love & desire discovered

• ‘Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss’

• lack of anagnorisis

• ‘How chang’d thou art! how pallid, chill, and drear!’

nature & the supernatural

• powerful storm

• ‘an elfin-storm from faery land’

• ‘The arras […] Flutter’d in the besieging wind’s uproar’

• the power of man vs. the power of nature

death & destruction

• death = inevitable

• ‘They glide, like phantoms’

• ‘already had his deathbell rung’

• the ‘deathbell’ signals the imminence of the Beadsman’s mortality

• ‘whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll’

• Angela foreshadows her own death

violence & revenge

• constant threat of violence

• Madeline’s family

• 'the whole blood-thirsty race!’

• the castle is an unsuitable environment for Madeline

moments of happiness and humour

• the bower

• ‘Stol’n to this paradise’

• ‘Into her dream she melted’

setting

• the castle

• ‘in that mansion foul’

• the chaotic revel of the ‘barbarian hordes’

• the bower

• ‘garlanded with […] fruits, and flowers’

• the bower is ‘carven’ within the castle

• ‘bitter chill’

• ‘Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers’

• January 20th (The Eve of St. Agnes, Patron Saint of Virgins)

tragic villain

• Madeline’s family

• ‘barbarian hordes’

• socially forbidden love

• feuding families

• the storm

• ‘an elfin-storm from faery land’

• power = villain = danger

tragic hero

• Madeline & Porphyro

• myopic

• naïve

• in love (hamartia)

• desire

• young

• lack of anagnorisis

• trusting nature

structure

• cyclical structure

• the poem is framed by the character of the Beadsman, who dies a lonely, ‘cold’ death

• the bower (Madeline’s bedchamber)

• ‘down she knelt for heaven’s grace and boon’

• ‘Full on this casement shone the wintry moon’