ISABELLA OR THE POT OF BASIL STANZAS 14-20 Eleanor Charman summary After the meeting of the lovers, Keats diverges from the story for a while to tell the reader the backstory and context of the characters and their society. Isabella and her brothers are ‘enriched in ancestral merchandise’ surrounded by ‘marble founts’ and ‘orange mounts’ – descriptions Keats uses to show their luxurious lifestyle. He then laments on the greed and pride of her brothers who causes so much suffering to their fellow beings: ‘for them the Ceylon diver/went naked to the hungry shark’ and questions how they found out about the relationship between Isabella and Lorenzo. Finally, Keats ‘talks’ to Boccaccio – the author of the original story and asks his forgiveness for the ‘crime’ of putting his old verse into modern language. Themes - ignorance ‘thousand men in troubles wide and dark/half ignorant’ Ignorance is presented in 2 ways in stanzas 14-20: • Lack of power or control linked to social class and knowledge of secrets • Lack of knowledge linked to a lack of education and resources Ignorance in this poem is a lack of knowledge in terms of characters and secrets. In the poem the brothers are able to take control of Isabella due to their lack of ignorance about the identity of her lover so they can kill Lorenzo so she can marry another man without a scandal and be more open to choosing a suitable husband. Isabella and Lorenzo don’t know that they are being spied on so are unaware of the danger that is posed. Isabella seems ignorant of the true natures of her brothers – that they will kill her lover just because he is lower class – and this is backed up with the description of her as ‘poor simple Isabel’ at the start of the poem. Themes - ignorance ‘thousand men in troubles wide and dark/half ignorant’ • Lack of knowledge linked to a lack of education and resources: The brothers would have been educated because: • Florence was the place where the Renaissance was born: ‘a cultural movement that affected European life in the early modern period and influenced the growth of intellectual inquiry, democracy and modern ideas.’ and the brothers are described as Florentines. • They are upper class so more likely to be educated as they can afford fees and resources. • There is some evidence of them being educated in (S:16), as they keep ‘account books’ – so they must have some knowledge of mathematics and be literate in order to keep them. These account books keep them in wealth and thus they keep their position and the power that comes with it. If they were ignorant, they would likely have been cheated of their money by the city merchants (Florence in the 1300s was growing as a banking city and corruption in these cities was rife (see ‘The Merchant of Venice’.) Themes - Greed Greed: intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food. There are many examples of greed in ‘Isabella’ such as: • Lorenzo and Isabella’s greed for one another • The brothers greed in their lust for power and control over Isabella and their workers • The greed of their ancestral family in collecting and spending so much money on unnecessary things. For possessions and wealth: This is shown in stanzas 14-17 with the endless descriptions of their wealth and possessions; their ‘orange mounts’ and life ‘enriched in ancestral merchandise’ alternated with the contrasting descriptions of workers in dreadful conditions: ‘in troubles wide and dark’ to highlight their greed in massing so much luxury compared to others in the same local society. It makes the brothers seem more corrupt in wanting more, especially when we know how their ‘marble founts’ are gotten. Their greed for these possessions is such that they are unwilling to give them up despite the blood on their hands in funding these luxuries. imagery ‘because red lin’d accounts were richer than the songs of Grecian years?’ ‘Red lin’d accounts’ – refers to the red lines in the pages of account books – books used to keep records of money spent and saved, and of money owed. Using these books the brothers could chart who owed them money and demand money payment from their workers thus exerting a power over them and making them weaker and work harder through the threat of the losing money. Keats could therefore use this reference to emphasise the control the rich have over the poor. As it is placed exactly after the laments about the poor treatment of the workers, Keats could also be using this image to represent the blood spilt by the brothers desire for luxuries, such as the seal which ‘lay full of darts’ and the diver whose ears ‘gush’ d blood’. Animal imagery From beggar spies/the hawks of ship mast forests’ The word ‘hawks’ could be a possible reference to the phrase ‘watch like a hawk’ – meaning to watch very carefully, linking to the motif of spying in the line before. Hawks are also vicious birds of prey who use their strength and intelligence to kill weaker animals – so they could be an animal personification of the brothers who kill lower-class Lorenzo in the forest. It hints that death will happen in the poem as the bird is used to symbolise the evil motives of the brothers. However, in some parts of the world, the Hawk symbolises seeing things from a bigger perspective and it is an animal believed to improve a person’s observations, foreshadowing the discovery of the love affair by the ‘beggar spies’ and the power that Imagery/symbolism ‘lazar stairs’ ‘lazar’ is another word for a ‘leper’ – a person who has the disease Leprosy. Leprosy is a highly contagious disease, so consequently, in the past, lepers were sent to remote districts to isolate them from other people. It was often a disease of poverty and malnutrition, giving another indicator of how poorly the brothers treat the lower classes and shows Keats’s proto-Marxist view on the rights of workers. There is also the phrase ‘a social leper’ –somebody who is shunned for moral or social reasons. As lepers were often seen as shameful and cast away as outcasts, the brothers having these ‘lazar stairs’ for their workers shows how badly the workers live (that they are almost expected to get the disease) and that they can use their power and influence to cast away people who displease them such as Lorenzo further on in the poem. Narrative techniques AUTHORIAL INTERVENTION: ‘O eloquent and famed Boccaccio/grant thou a pardon here’ ‘Isabella, or the pot of Basil’ was his first success after the colossal failure of ‘Endymion’ and his lack of confidence in his writing is shown with this method – in S19 he stops to apologise to Boccaccio, the original author for transforming his ‘old prose’ into ‘modern verse’. THIRD-PERSON OMNISCIENT NARRATOR: described as – ‘The third-person omniscient point of view is a method of storytelling in which the narrator knows the thoughts and feelings of all of the characters in the story.’ Proto-marxism What is it? https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marxism.asp ‘old lies’ • This could refer to the time-old customs and ways of thinking that there is a hierarchy of importance which should be followed in order to create a stable society ‘enriched from ancestral merchandise’ • This refers to the comfort and privilege of the aristocracy and the old families of which Isabella and her brothers are part of. • Keats could be saying (or certainly Marx would have said) that they are responsible for the plight of their workers and the nearby poor as they do nothing to relieve their suffering despite having the power to do so. https://www.politicalsciencenotes.com/marxism/marxism-meaning-features-andprinciples/1225#:~:text=Marxism%20consists%20of%20three%20elements.%20First%2 0is%20a,theory%20of%20value%20and%20theory%20of%20surplus%20value. Characterisation -the brothers Their vision is described as ‘covetous’ – ‘to long to possess something that belongs to someone else’ and demonstrates their lust for wealth. ‘Two close Hebrews’ – referring to the Italian stereotype in the Renaissance of Jews being careful with their money and having a reputation for trickery and greed. It is used to show the negative effect that wealth has had on the brothers – perhaps a social commentary by Keats. The description of them hiring ‘Cats-paws’ –people who do dirty deeds for other people, usually rich clients. They are often wanted by the authorities and in doing their job, put their lives in great danger. The ‘beggar spies’ are described as being ‘cat’s paws’ or similar, and demonstrates how corrupt and controlling the brothers are, to use their money to make poverty-stricken people do things that are morally wrong. We know that the brothers with their high status could also harm the men in other ways, and use their influence with the courts and authorities to harm them if they didn’t comply with their wishes. Context – pearl divers ‘Pearl diving is a very dangerous activity. Among other risks, divers may drown, experience hallucinations or encounter dangerous creatures of the sea’. There is evidence of the practice of pearl diving from 5000-6000 BC, suggesting that this form of ‘slavery’ as Keats suggests, has been going on for centuries and may never stop as long as men like Isabella’s brothers have power and money. It is a cruel practice in other ways too, to reflect the cruelty of the brothers mercenary power over the workers. Pearls are created for the market by attacking oysters with sand to activate their defence mechanisms (how pearls are created) repeatedly so the oysters most often over –harvest and harm themselves. Many oysters are killed when extracting the pearls. Oysters were also steadily growing extinct by that time through over harvest for jewellery use, and shows how the vanity and pride in looking wealthy and keeping status harms the environment in more ways than one. Bibliography S2: S3: S4:https://crossref-it.info/textguide/john-keats-selected-poems/40/2954 S5: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+10+&version=NIV (Chapter 10 verses 4-6 and https://themindfool.com/hawksymbolism/#:~:text=%20Hawk%20Symbolism%20%E2%80%93%20What%20does%20a%20hawk,good%20timing%2C%20you%20too%20can% 20learn...%20More%20 S6: S7: https://www.thefreedictionary.com/lazar S8: S10: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/ztdmtyc/revision/6 https://www.servicescape.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-narrative-voice-techniques S11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism#:~:text=Marxism%20is%20a%20method%20of%20socioeconomic%20analysis%20that,German%20phil osophers%20Karl%20Marx%20and%20Friedrich%20Engels%20. https://crossref-it.info/textguide/john-keats-selected-poems/40/3053 https://www.bing.com/search?q=seethe+meaning&cvid=137ef3285cbb408facf105fa31b4a1d0&pglt=131&FORM=ANNTA1&PC=U531 https://www.governmentvs.com/en/marxism-vs-aristocracy/comparison-63-55-0 https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marxism.asp https://revisesociology.com/2015/11/22/marx-key-ideas-summary/ S12: https://www.uw360.asia/history-diving-pearl-persian/ https://www.reference.com/world-view/kind-life-did-pearl-divers-live-bf361ad97f6eca1e FINIS
