earticle

영어

This paper attempts to analyze John Keats’s Isabella, focusing mainly on the changes occurring in the perception of its heroine. Through such analysis, this paper aims at illuminating the ways in which the author’s own understanding of the contemporary reality as well as his ideas about poetic composition is projected in the text. Isabella, the tragic heroine in one of Keats’s early romances, simultaneously embodies the poet’s own problems and dilemmas in a rather vicarious way. Before undergoing the transformation of perception after the traumatic loss of her beloved, Isabella appears to remain in the isolated realm of private feelings. While the idyllic love story of Isabella and Lorenzo certainly provides a critique of materialistic capitalism that dominates the outside world surrounding them, the lovers lack a clear understanding of reality, completely immersed in their feelings for each other. The fragile nature of the lovers’ insulated world points to the incompetence of the aesthetic in resisting the increasingly capitalistic society of the early 19th century. In contrast, Isabella experiences an extremely painful transformation of perception after Lorenzo’s murder by her materialistic brothers. Isabella performs the ritual of severing the head of her dead lover from his body, simultaneously separating herself from the naive, innocence domain of the past romance. After this ritual, she strives at a creative endeavor of growing the basil pot that nurtures itself with the nutrients of Lorenzo’s rotten head hidden underneath. Isabella’s act of converting the gruesome remains of the past into the regenerative growth of a new life mirrors Keats’s own creative attempt to transform reality through poetic imagination. Although Isabella’s pot of basil gets violently snatched from her, the tragic love story survives long after her death and succeeds in reaching many people’s hearts. Likewise, Keats expresses his longing for posthumous fame, despite his fear of hostile contemporary critics who often snub and ignore his poetical works.