Isabella Flashcards
What happens in this poem?
Isabella and Lorenzo are in love but they are fearful of expressing their true emotions, this causes them great suffering. After expressing their feelings, their love flourishes but they have to keep it hidden from her brothers. They find out and decide to kill Lorenzo to protect their families name/wealth. They lie to Isabella about his true whereabouts which causes her emotional suffering until she sees in a vision and tells her about his death. She goes to his grave and digs until she finds him and cuts off his head which she puts in a basil pot. She waters it with her tears as it flourishes. Until she leaves it unattended and the brothers steal it which causes her further suffering
How would you address structure?
1st sentence highlights tragedy - ‘Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel’
Length of poem - prolonged suffering l, heightens her tragedy
Brothers are villainous not much on them, more on in suffering they inflict and have on others
Cyclical nature to her mourning as she asks about the whereabouts of her ‘pot of basil’
Vision gives Isabella knowledge/agency
What language features does Keats use?
Religious/ mother vs infant, nature imagery
Repetitions - ‘why were they proud?’ ‘Too many…’
Pathetic fallacy - time setting reflects the development of their relationship
Metaphor - inevitability of Lorenzos death
Enjambment - outpour of emotions from Lorenzo
Foreshadowing (dramatic irony) - Lorenzos fate as he heads to the forest to meet the brothers
Use of simplistic language when Keats needs us to understand something
What is the form of the poem?
Ottava Rima - 8 lines which are 11 syllables long
Poem length mirrors Isabella’s prolonged misery and suffering
Sense that at the end of Isabella’s tale it has changed form as it has become a ‘burthen song’ - story lives on but the reality of their love doesn’t
Use of speakers perspective - evokes sympathy and pity for Isabella, reflects our reactions to the tale, elevation of tragedy as everyone else is blind to her suffering and piteous state
How would you address A03?
Social commentary:
World goes on as others suffer - nobody stops to take notice (only those with a heart)
Social status - brothers want Isabella to get married to someone of ‘high noble’
Are the brothers a product of society in their reaction to Lorenzo and Isabella’s relationship (viewed as a crime) - ‘before they fixed on the surest way to, to make the youngster for his crime atone’
Romantic context:
Love brings pain not pleasure - Lorenzos death seals Isabella unhappiness/suffering
Moments of happiness are rare
Historical context:
‘High conceit of such a bride’ - medieval law that meant people of different classes couldn’t marry, encouraged them to keep it hidden
Who is the protagonist(tragic hero)?
Isabella - tragic hero
‘Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel’
‘By gradual decay from beauty fell’
‘She had died in drowsy ignorance’
Does she have megalopsychia?
Presentation of Lorenzo in the pot of basil - treats him with respect and dignity he deserves after seeing his deathly state
Elevates his death - makes him seem heroic
What is her fatal flaw?
Failure to speak up about their love - ‘for power to speak; but still the ruddy tie’
Obsessive love with Lorenzo - suffering is to some extent self inflicted before she discovers his death and by creating a opportunity for him to leave her again physically by planting his head in the pot of basil
Is there an element of fate?
Lorenzo’s death involves fate - ‘to kill Lorenzo and there bury him’
Fate of Isabella’s tragic outcome - ‘for simple Isabel is soon to be among the dead’
‘My soul it to its doom’ - judgement made by God
‘I though some fate with pleasure or some strife’
What is her peripeteia?
‘A whole long month of May in this sad plight made their cheeks paler by the break of June’ - juxtaposition of the representation of spring/summer months in comparison to the development of their relationship (failing to blossom like the seasons)
‘I knew not this hard life, I thought the worst was simple misery… I’ll visit thee’ - Isabella’s knowledge/insight gives her agency, even though her love still brings pain it has brought consolidation
What is her hamartia?
Remaining silent about their love - brings her pain not pleasure, ‘fevered his high conceit,’ ‘Isabella’s untouched cheek fell sick within the roses just domain’
‘Close in a bower…unknown of any’ - trying to keep their love hidden, heightens danger and tragedy
Leaving the basil pot unattended after they have lied to her about his whereabouts
Is there a sense of hubris?
Brothers: - take pride in the malcontent ways and deviancy
‘Why were they proud?’
‘Each richer by his being a murderer’
Isabella:
Takes pride in the presentation of Lorenzo and his head - it’s burial, how she combs its hair and protects it as she soaks it with her tears
What is her anagnorisis?
‘It was a vision…’ - realisation about what happened to Lorenzo (from his perspective)
‘To steal my basil pot away’ - realisation of its absence, suffering is even greater as there is no getting back the physicality of their love which parallels with ‘love never dies, but lives, immortal lord’
Is there a sense of catharsis (pity)?
Pity Lorenzo as he obliviously accepts the brothers request and willing/unknowingly goes to his death - ‘so the two brothers and their murdered man’
Repetition of Isabella being ‘poor’ - build sympathy, told a lie about Lorenzos whereabouts
Her suffering evokes pity and elevated the cathartic experience - prolonged in the actions in the poem as the length of the poem itself, eternal/constant mourning and misery
‘No heart was there in Florence but did mourn in pity of her love’ - evokes pity in the reader moreso and we recognise that nobody else sympathises with her circumstance
STRONG catharsis
Who is the villain?
Brothers:
‘Why were they proud?’ - elevates their villainy as they take pride in their deviancy
‘These men of cruel clay’ - malevolency is solidified in their construction (use of word clay), dehumanises them, suggests their cruelty is ingrained in them. God used clay to make Adam, could suggest that evil is naturally within all men
‘Half ignorant’ - half knowledgeable, half unaware yet still intended
Told Isabella a lie about Lorenzos death
There final crime brings about Isabella’s tragic outcome which reaffirms their stays as ‘they contrived to steal the basil pot…and so left Florence in a moments space’
