ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Agnes is a Romantic narrative poem of 42 Spenserian stanzas set in the Middle Ages. It was written by John Keats in 1819 and published in 1820. The poem was considered by many of Keats’s contemporaries and the succeeding Victorians to be one of his finest and was influential in 19th-century literature.

Detailed explanation-2: -’The Eve of St. Agnes’ by John Keats is a poem of epic length written in Spenserian, nine-line style. The first eight lines of each stanza is written in iambic pentameter with the last, known as an “alexandrine” written in iambic hexameter. The first eight lines have five beats per line while the last has six.

Detailed explanation-3: -Form and Meter. “The Eve of St. Agnes” is a narrative poem consisting of 42 stanzas of nine lines each, for a total of 378 lines. It follows a rigid Spenserian form-each stanza contains eight lines written in iambic pentameter, with the final ninth line written in iambic hexameter (also known as an “alexandrine line”).

Detailed explanation-4: -St Agnes is the patron saint of chastity, girls, engaged couples, rape victims and virgins. One of Keat’s best-loved poems, published in 1820, is called ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ and tells the story of Madeline and her lover Porphyro.

Detailed explanation-5: -In The Eve of St. Agnes, Keats finds out a happy alternative of Isabella, Lamia, and the other darker odes linking with death or failure. The major theme of this poem is the celebration of human love and as the representative of critics it is an “imaginative projection of young love” (Stillinger, 1999, p. 38).