John Keats, Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil

Dawn Vernooy (Shippensburg University)

Ed. by Daniel Robinson, Widener University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.06: English Writing and Culture of the Romantic Period, 1789-1837.
Vol. editors: Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Daniel Robinson (Widener University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1820

Places

England ()

Genres and Modes

Adaptation
Poem
Romance

Resources

“Isabella; or, the Pot of Basil” is typically positioned as a transitional poem, dividing John Keats’s early work (the volume of 1817 and Endymion) from his more mature pieces (such as “Lamia”, “The Eve of St. Agnes”, and the famous odes of the 1820 volume). Scholarship since the late 1960s has sought to recuperate “Isabella”, identifying it as more than just a boundary marker by highlighting its reinvention of the medieval romance genre and its demonstration of Keats’s connection to the real world (by its anti-industrialist commentary). The criticism, however, remains haunted by Keats’s own assessment of the poem as “smokeable” and “weak-sided”. Aside from the fluctuating value that scholarship has p…

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2933 words

Citation: Vernooy, Dawn. "Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 March 2012 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=34174, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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