The Pre-Raphaelites and their Keatsian Romanticism: An Analysis of the Renderings of 'The Eve of St Agnes and Isabella'

Abstract

This research examines the influence of Romantic poet John Keats on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a Victorian artistic and literary movement. The aim of this paper is to prove how Keats became, moreover, a major connecting link between Romanticism and the Victorian era, thus enabling the continued existence of certain Romantic aesthetic features until the beginning of the twentieth century. In that sense, we will explore how this influence took shape and we will analyse Pre-Raphaelite works of art which have as source of inspiration some of Keats’s well-known poems (“Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil” and “The Eve of St. Agnes”). This examination will allow us to perceive the manner in which these artists devised their pictorial style based on Keatsian pictorialism in poetry, with a special emphasis on the significance of medievalism, and the beauty and sensuousness of his verses, and how they were transferred into their canvases.

The Theme of Romanticism in Medieval British Literature

“…The old English period was in the age of 450-1066 years, the Middle English period was in the year 1066 to 1500 years and the neo-English period is after 1500 years. Morillo (2020) stated that medievalism is defined as the system and practice that occurred in the Middle Ages of English literature. Medievalism was expressed in many fields such as literature, architecture, art, music, scholarship, philosophy, and so on.…”