＂Of heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire＂: Sacredness and Eroticism in Keats`s The Eve of St. Agnes

Abstract

Modern interpretations of John Keats`s The Eve of St. Agnes have been dominated by the dichotomy between the ＂idealist reading,＂ which regards the sexual union between Porphyro and Madeline as a fulfilment of Romantic love and imagination that prevails over social restrictions, and the ＂sceptical reading,＂ which considers such a union a potential rape of Madeline by Porphyro. In a departure from the preceding research, this paper focuses on Keats`s synthesis of the religious and the erotic and proposes that he construes religious sacredness as a unique experience of eroticism in both Christian and non-Christian contexts. First, the ritual of St. Agnes`s Eve signifies Keats`s eroticisation of Christian images, which reincorporates sexual desire into the concepts of resurrection and the second coming of Jesus. By doing so, Keats looks forward to a divine intimacy of sexual vitality, in contrast to the weak and sterile state represented by the Beadsman`s asceticism. Second, with pagan images such as Merlin, the mermaid, and Medusa, Keats complicates the interaction between Madeline and Porphyro by dissolving the oft-assumed power relationship between them. The Eve of St. Agnes shows a unique aspect of Keats`s idea of sacred experience, which is essentially sensual and erotic, and offers an alternative angle to approach the poet`s understanding of religion and its connection to poetic creation.