Cultural Studies:   John Keats's (1795-1821)  "Ode to Psyche"--  Masculine Quest, or Poetic Feminization?  "The Eve of St. Agnes"--Romantic Passion, Imagination or Rape?  Negative Capability:  "when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doublts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason..." (Letters I, 193)  Imagination:   "may be compared to Adam's dream--he awoke and found it truth" (Letters I, 185)    Right:   (Portrait of John Keats in Rome, shortly before his death from tuberculosis in February 1821, by his friend Joseph Severn.)

Copyright © 1997, The British Library Board  British Library, Ashley MS 4165, f.v   FromPortico - The British Library's Online informationServer

 

Arthur Hughes, The Eve of St. Agnes, London, Tate Gallery  (from Women/Image/Text)  Please pay attention to the multiple frames, including the stanza that decorates the frame:  They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve  Young virgins might have visions of delight,  And soft adorings from their loves receive   Upon the honey'd middle of the night, If ceremonies due they did aright;  As, supperless to bed they must retire,  And couch supine their beauties, lily-white;  Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require, Of heaven for upward eyes for all that they desire.

 more paintings--Study for Hughes's "The Eve of St. Agnes"
"The Eve of St. Agnes" by E. Siddal

the narrator eating up Psyche (from "Poetry as Enforcement") ?
In response to the concatenation of negatives of non-being, the poet asserts himself Psyche's grove and shrine, which, in
practice, make up the sarcophagus (literally 'flesh-eating' coffin) of her individuality. The poet indeed is about to absorb her
identity completely. D. L. Hoeveler has astutely observed that the Romantic poets were very keen on 'creat[ing] female
characters with whom their male heroes (often slightly veiled versions of themselves) could merge in a sort of apocalyptic
union'. Put in an even more straightforward way, Hoeveler stresses how 'The Romantics cannibalistically consumed these
female characters, shaped them into their ideal alter egos, and most of the time destroyed them by the conclusion of the
poem' (27). In the ode, the poet's ploys of conjuring Psyche into being through ritualistic invocation, only to deconstruct her
afterwards, fits this scheme very well. The poet came to the sacred, 'scarce espied' bower, saw the goddess, recognised her
and thus acquired absolute ascendancy. 'I see and sing' and, one may complete, conquered; or Vene vidi vici .

The 'Ode to Psyche' is by no means the only instance in Keats's work which contains such an all-devouring propensity in the
persona. The following excerpt, taken from a sonnet addressed to Keats's beloved, Fanny Brawne, is particularly revealing:

     O, let me have thee whole, all, all be mine!
     That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
     Of love, your kiss, those hands, those eyes divine,
     That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,
     Yourself your soul in pity give me all,
     Withhold no atom's atom or I die
     ('I cry your mercy', ll. 5-10)
 

revision of "St. Agnes"
"It is somewhat ironical to reflect that the hero's plight was in certain ways similar to Keats's own when he discovered that passages in the completed manuscript of the poem offended the scruples of his publishers and he was forced to revise them, partly unwillingly, to bring them into conformity with the demands of propriety." (Sperry, Stuart M.  Keats the Poet.  Princeton UP, 1973, 213)
"The devices of disguise and censorship perform an integral and even aesthetic function throught the whole formation of the work..." (213)
 
 

Electronic Texts:
• The Poetical Works of John Keats --E-Text from Bartleby Archive
• SELECTED POETRY OF JOHN KEATS (1795-1821)--E-Text from U. of Toronto
• The Eve of St. Agnes:  E-Text

Biographies:

• Keats' life: John "Doctor" Keats--a brief and interesting biography
• Keats, Teats, and the Fane of Poesy--a psychoanalytic study of Keats' sensual and contradictory images (esp. about poetry) and his melancholy.      Interesting Associations!   Relating "Ode to Psyche" to "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the critic said, 'Psyche's "fane" leads to the images of temple, altar, and sacrifice, and to the drive for psychic at-one-ment or identity that occasions them. Ideal poesy is itself a temple, like the "living fane of sounds" to be found in Milton ("Lines on Seeing a Lock of Milton's Hair," 12 [early draft]) and contrasted with the author's own "burnt sacrifice of verse / And melody" (9-10). But Keats's classic picture of "the sacrifice" includes, as in "Ode on a Grecian Urn," an "altar," the "mysterious priest," and "that heifer lowing at the skies." ... Perhaps the image impresses Keats in part owing to the colloquial use of heifer for woman (stemming from Samson's "ploughed with my heifer" metaphor in Judges 14:18). '

Relevant criticism:
• "Poetry as Enforcement: Conquering the Muse in Keats's 'Ode to Psyche'" (Romanticism On the Net)

" In this article, I will concentrate on the 'Ode to Psyche' as an example of a poem indicative of Keats's often neglected or misinterpreted (male) gender politics."

Study for "The Eve of St. Agnes"

from Oxford and the Pre-Raphaelites.  Jon Whiteley.  Ashmolean Museum Oxford, 1989.  Above p. 16, Right p. 17

 

"The Eve of St. Agnes" by E. Siddal from Poems and Drawings of Elizabeth Siddal.  Ed. Rogerr C. Lewis & Mark Samuels Lasner.  The Wombat Press, 1978.