Isabella; or The Pot of Basil

Characters
1. Isabella
  1. "lisped tenderly"
  2. "«O cruelty, «To steal my Basil-pot away from me!»"
2. Lorenzo
  1. "The ruddy tide stifled his voice"
  2. "I am a shadow now"
3. Brothers
  1. "Enriched from ancestral merchandise"
  2. "Why were they proud?"
  3. "these men of cruel clay Cut Mercy with a sharp knife to the bone"
Tragic Elements
1. Machiavellian villains
2. Tragic fall: Loss of life, love and beauty
3. Inevitability
  1. "Poor simple Isabel!"
  2. "Twin roses by the zephyr blown apart"
4. Hamartia
  1. Lorenzo's cowardice (perhaps they were doomed from the start)
  2. Isabella's love and passion
5. Catharsis
  1. Shared purgation of pity and anger with the telling of the tale, like the rest of country
  2. Less of a moral tale, arguably not Isabella's fault, therefore empty rather than fulfilling
6. Tragic hero
  1. atypical: female, innocent, victim of circumstance and love
Imagery
1. "There is richest juice in poison-flowers"
2. "forest-hearse"
Form and structure
1. narrative poem
  1. dramatized, slow-paced
2. Ottava Rima
  1. Italian renaissance poetry
  2. Stanzas have 8 lines with 11 syllables each, ab ab ab cc rhyme scheme
  3. heroic
Themes
1. Beauty
  1. " So sweet Isabel By gradual decay from beauty fell"
2. Passion and Love
  1. "Alas! When passion is both meek and wild"
  2. "Poesied with hers in dewy rhyme"
  3. "Thou leadest me to summer clime"
  4. "I must taste the blossoms that unfold"
  5. "’Twas love; cold, - dead indeed, but not dethroned."
3. Desperation and sorrow
  1. "Honeyless days and days did he let pass"
4. dreams
5. eternity
  1. "evermore"
School of Thought
1. Feminism
  1. Isabella considered the brother's ownership
    1. "’twas their plan to coax her by degrees To some high noble and his olive-trees."
  2. Speaks out first to encourage Lorenzo
    1. "In her tone and look he read the rest"
2. Marxism
  1. Brother's as a capitalist system under which the working class suffer
    1. "Half-ignorant, they turn’d an easy wheel, That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel."
Devices
1. Addressing Bocaccio/audience
  1. Appeal to authority
  2. Sense of inevitability
  3. "O eloquent and famed Boccaccio!"
2. Vivid descriptions such as the vision of Lorenzo
  1. Marred
  2. "miry", "loamed"
  3. "cold doom"
  4. Wormy circumstance
3. lingering on Isabella's sorrowful descriptions to evoke pity
4. Use of repetition
  1. Why were they proud?
  2. And she forgot...
5. exclamations

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Isabella; or The Pot of Basil

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	Created by Charlotte Hall over 7 years ago