"The Eve of St. Agnes" is a long poem (42 verses) by John Keats, written in 1819 and published in 1820. It is widely considered to be amongst his finest poems and was influential in 19th century literature. The title comes from the day (or evening) before the feast of Saint Agnes (or St. Agnes' Eve). The eve falls on January 20; the feast day on the 21. The divinations referred to by Keats in this poem are referred to by John Aubrey in his Miscellanies (1696) as being associated with St Agnes' night. John Keats John Keats (October 31, 1795 – February 23, 1821) was one of the principal poets in the English Romantic movement. ... 1819 common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... 1820 was a leap year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... The calendar of saints is a traditional Christian method of organising a liturgical year on the level of days by associating each day with a saint, and referring to the day as the saints day of that saint. ... Saint Agnes is a virgin martyr celebrated annually by Christians with a feast on January 21. ... January 20 is the 20th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... January 21 is the 21st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... John Aubrey. ...
Similar rituals of divination designed to obtain visions of a future spouse were also associated with Halloween. This man in Rhumsiki, Cameroon, tells the future by interpreting the changes in position of various objects as caused by a fresh-water crab through nggà m[1]. Divination is the practice of ascertaining information from supernatural sources. ... A jack-o-lantern Halloween is an observance celebrated on the night of October 31, most notably by children dressing in costumes and going door-to-door collecting candy. ...
Importance
The poem contrasts young love with a hostile outside world and addresses many of the same themes tackled in his odes. It is a long narrative full of sensuality and imagination. It was a widely influential poem on fellow romantics and its pictorial quality influenced the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in art. Persephone, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. ...
External links
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
The_Eve_of_St._Agnes
The Theme of "The Eve of St. Agnes" in the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, An analysis of the poem at Victorianweb
Of all the works, artistic or literary, that use the subject of St. Agnes' Eve as its basis, John Keats's narrative poem "The Eve of St. Agnes" written in 1819 is undoubtedly the most famous.
It was actually William Holman Hunt's Porphyro during the drunkenness attending the revelry (The Eve of St. Agnes) that was the instigation for bringing the PRB together in 1848.
His favorite of Keats's poems were "Eve of St. Mark," "Isabella," and, of course, "The Eve of St. Agnes"; he wrote, " 'The Eve of St. Agnes" "and the fragment 'The Eve of Saint Mark' are in manner the choicest and the chastest of Keats' works'"(Bottai).
Agnes, a young Christian convert, is honored as one of the four great virgin martyrs of the Christian Church.
St. Agnes, not only had no desire to marry, but was prepared to die for the sake of her faith and her virginity as "the bride of Christ", rather than become the wife of the son of a Roman prefect.
Agnes is regarded as the patron saint of young women and the special protectress of bodily purity.
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