Isabella | Aspects of Tragedy

the type of tragic text

• classical tragedy

• Aristotlean

• Romantic gothic Medieval ballad

• Italian

setting

• Florence, Italy

• Mediterranean world

• warm, genial climate

• Spring or Summer atmosphere

• the manor house

• the garden

• establishes conflict between Isabella's romance with Lorenzo and the materialistic values of her family

• ‘Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel! Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love's eye!’

• highlights the power imbalance between Lorenzo and Isabella's family

• links Lorenzo to how he is viewed by society

• the bower

• ‘Close in a bower of hyacinth and musk’

• the woodland

• ‘They pass'd the water into a forest quiet for the slaughter’

tragic flaws

• Isabella's grief encompasses her

• ‘Poor Girl! put on thy stifling widow's weed’

• Isabella's obsession with her grief

• Lorenzo's blindness to social dangers

• myopic behaviour

• naivety

• hubris

• love (hamartia)

• prevented from foreseeing the brothers' murderous intent

• belief that their love will transcend societal bounds

tragic hero

• Isabella & Lorenzo

• young

• hubris

• love (hamartia)

• the lovers break societal norms and are punished by death and suffering

• Isabella's anagnorisis is that she has been naïve as societal bounds cannot be broken

tragic villain

• Isabella's brothers

• power = villains = danger

• ‘Half-ignorant’

• exploitation of children, animals, and colonial lands

• ‘ledger men’

• represent grasping capitalism with their sweatshops

• ‘In blood from stinging whip’

• commodify Isabella

• the brothers’ values are aligned with that of the Renaissance period

• wealth and social customs destroy true love

• the brothers’ superficial, careless attempt to cover up their crime

• ‘They dipp'd their swords in the water’

• the brothers are also products of their own environment

• the brothers' subconscious guilt

• ‘And every night in dreams they groan'd aloud, to see their sister in her snowy shroud’

• Keats is critical of the forces that shape the brothers, the antagonists

• the true villain is society

the inevitability of fate

• the lovers’ deaths are foreshadowed throughout the poem

• Isabella and Lorenzo's love is forbidden by society

• the predictable, rigid ottava rima structure parallels the inevitable fates of the tragic protagonists

• ‘They could not in the self-same mansion dwell […] They could not […] They could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep but to each other dream, and nightly weep’

• ‘“O may I never see another night, Lorenzo, if thy lips breathe not love's tune”’

• ‘sweet Isabella's untouch'd cheek fell sick within the rose's just domain’

• ‘their murder'd man’

• ‘And every night in dreams they groan'd aloud, to see their sister in her snowy shroud’

violence & revenge

• the deadly nature of the brothers

• semantic field of suffering

• ‘And for them many a weary hand did swelt in torched mines and noisy factories’

• ‘In blood from stinging whip’

• ‘The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark lay full of darts’

moments of humour and happiness

• the bower

• ‘Close in a bower of hyacinth and musk’

• ‘Were they unhappy then? - It cannot be’

• the love of Lorenzo and Isabella, although threatened, is safe in its bower of feeling

structure

• ottiva rima structure

• predictable rhythm and structure 

• rigid structure parallels the inevitable fates of the tragic protagonists

• reflects the rigid structure of society and its laws at the time

• harmonic rhyming couplets, associated with love poetry

language 

• ‘I know what I was, I feel full well what is’

• ‘know’ = reality

• ‘feel’ = imagination

• the adjective ‘purple’ has connotations of eroticism and sexuality

• ‘Isabella's untouch'd cheek fell sick within the rose's just domain’, and Lorenzo is consumed with ‘sick longing’

• the final stanza uses parallelism to underscore the connection between Isabella's state of lovesickness and her tragic death

• ‘And so she pined, and so she died forlorn’

effect of the tragedy on the audience

• a commentary on the real world

• Keats is critical of the forces that shape the brothers, the antagonists 

• the brothers represent grasping capitalism with their sweatshops and exploitation of children, animals, and colonial lands 

• the true villain is society