ENGLISH 1C06 Lecture : History of English Literature-Feb.7&9 Keats & Tennyson/Arnold & Hardy
Document Summary
Eve of st. agnes (john keats) and mariana (alfred lord tennyson) Much overlapping of death, and elegiac longing, mood poems: st. agnes, embodied with eroticism, but framed by death. Shared stylistic and thematic preoccupations: neo-gothic (pre-renaissance ideology) painterly and dreamlike, depicting shifting consciousness, connecting religion and desire: the angel woman, anxious about woman"s sexuality, obsessed with time and death. Contexts: rise in gothic in literature and architecture (the primitive medieval , catholic emancipation in britain 1829 (proudly protestant church set against the power of rome and post-emancipation, newfound fascination with. Catholicism): pre-raphaelite paintings (they wanted get back to the simplicity of medieval story, to nature, with strong colours, and created static tableau history painting"). Comes alive, full of effigies beadsman imagining them alive. Obsessed with death, praying for the dead. Madeleine beadsman = folk vs. religious ritual: love: consummate love can be holy, otherworldly in desire, Porphyro: hiding in closet watching her getting into bed.