Download Chapter 6 Romantic Verse Narrative

Chapter 6
Romantic Verse Narrative
•The Romantic poets produced all sorts of
established poetic forms:
•Narrative
•Epic
•Ballad
•Ode
•Sonnet
• Romantic poetry is associated with Lyrical poems.
• In a lyrical poem, we have a speaker and a person
spoken to, the “I” and the “you”
• Not all Romantic poems are lyrical
• Chapter 6 deals with another form of poetry: The
Romantic Verse Narrative eg: La Belle Dame Sans Merci
and The Eve of St Agnes by Keats.
• Romantic poetry stems from Medieval and Renaissance
forms.
• The modern confusion is due to the involvement of
amorous encounters in the stories of knights and their
fabulous adventures.
• Features of Romantic writing:
• Idealized love and idealized figures (give
examples)
• Medieval and exotic settings (examples)
• Quest for the ideal through adventures, dangers
and risks underwent during the journeys.
• Implausible and fabulous events followed by a
resolution of problems (denouement)
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
by Keats
• La Belle Dame Sans Merci (p:157-8)
• Keats is influenced by Spencer’s “The Fairie Queene”
• It is connected to his future fiancée (Fanny Brawne)
• It expresses the destructiveness of love (influence of
traditional ballads)
• It has an imitation of medieval romance (spot the
elements from the language used)
• It is nearer to Gothic approach of Romance
• It is a narrative in which the narrator meets a knight who
tells his story with the lady who bewitched him.
• It is set within dreams and visions (fanciful element)
• The poem ends with a sense of alienation and despair
rather than a union between idealized lovers.
• The ironic approach of Keats:
• The protagonist is not a knight at arms, but rather a
victim male figure who was bewitched by the dangerous
enchantress
• The quest for ideal is not represented through the love
relationship only, but also through human history.
• The knight’s quest for ideal love ends up with an
antagonizing image of pale knights and princes who fall
prey to illusions of idealism (link with French Revolution’s
ideals)
La Belle Dame sans Merci
John Keats (1795-1821)
'O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.
'O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest 's done.
La Belle Dame sans Merci
John Keats (1795-1821)
Stanzas I-II
In the first two lines of stanzas I and II,
the anonymous speaker asks a
question. The first line of both
questions is identical ("O, what can ail
thee, knight-at-arms"). The second
lines differ somewhat; in stanza I, the
question focuses on his physical
condition ("Alone and palely loitering");
in stanza II, the question describes
both the knight's physical state and his
emotional state ("Haggard and woebegone"). This repetition with slight
variation is called incremental
repetition and is a characteristic of the
folk ballad.
La Belle Dame sans Merci
John Keats (1795-1821)
This speaker sees no reason for the
knight's presence ("loitering") in such a
barren spot (the grass is "wither'd" and
no birds sing). Even in this spot, not all
life is wasteland, however; the squirrel's
winter storage is full, and the harvest
has been completed. In other words,
there is an alternative or fulfilling life
which the knight could choose. Thus
lines 3 and 4 of stanzas I and II present
contrasting views of life
'I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.‘
'I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
Stanza III
This stanza elaborates on the knight's physical
appearance and mental state, which are associated with
dying and with nature. In the previous stanzas, the
descriptions of nature are factual; here, nature is used
metaphorically. His pallor is compared first to the
whiteness of a lily, then to a rose; the rose is "fading" and
quickly "withereth." The lily, of course, is a traditional
symbol of death; the rose, a symbol of beauty. The
knight's misery is suggested by the "dew" or perspiration
on his forehead.
'I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;(=belt)
She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
'I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery's song.
“ 'I made a garland for her
head,
And bracelets too, and
fragrant zone;(=belt)
She look'd at me as she did
love,
And made sweet moan.”
Arthur Hughes (British,
1832-1915) PreRaphaelite Painter.
“'I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery's song.”
Sir Frank
Dicksee
(British,
1853-1928)
'She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said,
"I love thee true!"
'She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sigh'd fill sore;
And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four.
“'She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said,
"I love thee true!"
'She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sigh'd fill sore;
And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four.”
John William
Waterhouse
'And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream'd—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill's side.
'I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—"La belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!"
“'I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—"La belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!"
'I saw their starved lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.”
John Keats
“Eve of St. Agnes”
What is the Eve of St. Agnes?
• St. Agnes, the patron saint of virgins, died a martyr in
fourth century Rome. She was condemned to be
executed after being raped all night in a brothel;
however, a miraculous thunderstorm saved her from
rape. St. Agnes Day is Jan. 21.
• Keats based his poem on the superstition that a girl
could see her future husband in a dream if she
performed certain rites on the eve of St. Agnes; if
she went to bed without looking behind her and lay
on her back with her hands under her head, he
would appear in her dream, kiss her, and feast with
her.
Where does the legend originate
?
• There is some controversy regarding
where Keats procured the “story” or
tale of the poem
– Boccaccio’s work Filocolo
– Scott’s work “The Lay of the Last
Minstrel”
– Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
– Spenser
Tension in the Poem
•
•
•
•
•
Youth and Age
Love and Hate
Sacred and Profane
Color (Hot and Cool)
Chill and Warmth
Youth and Age
• The two pairs of principal characters:
Porphyro and Madeline; Beadsman and Angela
– Beadsman
• “But no--already had his deathbell rung;
The joys of all his life were said and sung:”
(Stanza III 23-24)
• “And back returneth, meagre, barefoot,
wan, / Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees:”
Stanza II13-14)
Youth and Age
• Porphyro
– Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire
(Stanza IX, 76)
– Like puzzled urchin on an aged crone (Stanza
XV, 129)
Youth and Age
• Angela
– “For I am slow and feeble, and scarce dare”
(Stanza XX,176)
– “Ah! why wilt thou affright a feeble soul? “A
poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard
thing, / “Whose passing-bell may ere the
midnight toll; / “Whose prayers for thee, each
morn and evening, “Were never miss’d.”—
(Stanza XVIII,154-157)
Youth and Age
• Madeline
– When Madeline, St. Agnes’ charmed maid,
/ Rose, like a mission’d spirit, unaware:
(Stanza XXII,192-193)
– She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove
fray’d and fled. (Stanza XXII,198)
Love and Hate
• There is a rivalry between families in the
poem. This harkens to Romeo and Juliet
– Baron and his kinsmen in the castle
• For him, those chambers held barbarian
hordes, /Hyena foemen, and hot-blooded
lords, / Whose very dogs would execrations howl /
Against his lineage: not one breast affords / Him
any mercy, in that mansion foul, (Stanza X, 85-89)
Sacred and the Profane
• The intermingling of the spirit and the flesh
– Porphyro comes to the castle for earthly
pleasures.
– Ethereal, flush’d, and like a throbbing
star / Seen mid the sapphire heaven’s deep
repose; / Into her dream he melted, as the
rose / Blendeth its odour with the violet,—
Solution sweet: (Stanza XXXVI , 320-326)
Sacred and the Profane
• Madeline is still part of the sacred
• And on her silver cross soft
amethyst, / And on her hair a glory, like a
saint: / She seem’d a splendid angel,
newly drest, /Save wings, for heaven:—
Porphyro grew faint:/ She knelt, so pure a
thing, so free from mortal taint (Stanza,
XXV,221-225)
Color
• White or Silver signifying chasteness
• Red or Rose signifying passion
– There are examples of the juxtaposition of
color throughout the poem; however the two
intermingle in the following passage
Color and Synthesis
• “Full on this casement shone the wintry
moon, /And threw warm gules on
Madeline’s fair breast, / As down she knelt
for heaven’s grace and boon; /Rosebloom fell on her hands, together
prest,/ And on her silver cross soft
amethyst” (Stanza XXV, 220-225)
Chill and Warmth
• The poem opens with a description of the
icy cold.
– “ ST. AGNES’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it
was! /The owl, for all his feathers, was acold; /The hare limp’d trembling through the
frozen grass, /And silent was the flock in
woolly fold:” (Stanza I, 1-5)
Cold and Warmth
• The castle with all its gothic and ethereal
spirits is where there is warmth; however,
the young lovers can not remain inside
their dream. Indeed, after consummating
their relationship they must go back into
the storm.