The English Romantic Catholic Tradition

The Eve of Saint Agnes
This Friday is the feast day of Saint Agnes and that makes Thursday evening the eve of Saint Agnes all of which makes this week the perfect one to consider Keats' greatest poem. I think that of all the elements of what I call the English Romantic Catholic Tradition, this poem is the most important.

But what the heck is the English Romantic Catholic tradition? What I mean by that is the way England's Catholic past haunted her poets and artists in the 19th century. Catholicism was just there and it became an opportunity to dwell on something a little mysterious and weird. And it became an opportunity to be, to use one of the critics' favourite words, a little transgressive.

The settings in question were, quite literally, Gothic. Writers like Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe had set their Gothic novels in a Catholic culture but were careful to always set the drama in foreign countries. It didn't escape readers' attention, however, that England herself was dotted with Gothic architecture. Thus Catherine Morland in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey has no trouble projecting her fantasies onto a house built on an old abbey. Austen means to mock the romantic idea.

Keats moves everything a  step closer with his poem which is clearly set in England. He keeps some distance by keeping it in the past.

What I think is most fascinating about the poem is the poem itself. What I mean by that is that it is just a great read and there is nothing better to do with it than just read it. If I get ambitious, I may create an audio file of it and put it up here. In the meantime, the good folks at Bartleby have put it up on line for us to read it ourselves.

And it is really good to read it. This is one of those poems that critics love to torture us with. They do this because critics tend to think they are more important than the works. 'Pay attention to me,' they scream endlessly.

To wrap up, let me cite you an interesting line from a man who may well be the stupidest critic of modern times. Being the stupidest critic of modern times has not stopped him from being deeply revered. I mean Meyer Howard Abrams, better known as M.H. Abrams. He said this of the poem that people who praise it 'tend to confirm one's uneasy feeling that what is sometimes called "the most perfect" of Keats' longer poems is a mere fairy-tale romance, unhappily short on meaning.'

Because what a poem is really for is so some monster bore can stand up in front of a classroom and tell you about the meaning. Or you could just read it:

ST. AGNES’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censer old,
Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death,
Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.

The rest is here.