Keats Writes 'The Eve of St Agnes'
Poet involved
What happened
John Keats composed 'The Eve of St Agnes' in January 1819, set in a medieval castle during midwinter, drawing on the folk belief that a girl who performed certain rituals on St Agnes's Eve would dream of her future husband. The poem's castle setting — with its stained-glass windows, moonlit chambers, and secret passages — is one of the most sensorially elaborate in English poetry. It was published in Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes and Other Poems in 1820, one of the great poetry collections in the language.
Literary impact
'The Eve of St Agnes' is the supreme example of the castle as a space of erotic and spiritual intensity in English Romantic poetry. Keats uses the medieval fortress not merely as backdrop but as a living presence — the cold stone, the carved angels, the locked doors — that gives physical weight to the lovers' vulnerability. The poem synthesised the Gothic castle tradition with classical sensuousness to produce something entirely new, influencing Tennyson's 'The Lady of Shalott' and the Pre-Raphaelite poets' return to medieval settings.
Source: Wikipedia
