Romantic love in John Keats poetry. Explore the ways in which romantic love in ‘Isabella; or The Pot of Basil’ and one other poem. Eve of St Agnes. Unit 3 Pearson A level English Literature
Explore the ways in which romantic love in ‘Isabella; or The Pot of Basil’ and one other poem.
In both ‘Isabella; or The Pot of Basil’ and ‘Eve of St Agnes’ Keats explores a romantic love between
men and women. The passionate love affairs are characterised by allusions to Shakespeare’s Romeo
& Juliet, an all-consuming nature and a closeness between love and death. Keats writes this into his
poems in a variety of ways.
One way in which Keats presents romantic love is through the close relationship that love has to
death. For instance, in ‘Eve of St Agnes’, the couple “glide, like phantoms” as if their love has
expanded into an experience of pure heaven. For which, of course, both persons have to die but for
Keats this passion is easy to accept and something to lead your life by. Similarly, in ‘Isabella’, Keats
again demonstrates a passion close to death. Whilst I fact Lorenzo is dead, Isabella maintains their
romantic love through death. Keats says, “love never dies, but lives immortal”. It stands to signify
that death doesn’t end love and that forever is plausible for romantics. It was this overwhelming
passion in romantic love that reigned over death giving it immortality. Keats wasn’t a believer in faith
or religion, but he was an avid reader, and was heavily influenced by the telling’s of Greek mythology
in which all Gods are immortal. Thus, reaffirms Keats’ reasoning for making love stronger than death.
He mentions in ‘Isabella’ that “’twas Love – cold, dead indeed, but not dethroned.” Not only has
Keats personified Love by giving it mortality and more obviously a capital letter, through which he
elevates its status, he also confirms the spiritual immortality that romantic love possesses, (as after
all, Love was “dead indeed” but it was not “dethroned”) This gives immense strength to love and
how love will live on despite death.
Another way in which Keats presents romantic love is through his allusions to Shakespeare’s Romeo
& Juliet – a tragic play that ends in death. An example of this comes in ‘Eve of St Agnes’, when arises
a degree of forbidden love. Similar to Shakespeare’s “A plague on both your houses”, Keats states
that “he curs’d thee and thine, both house and land” – an echo to Shakespeare. In this line Keats
uses syntactic parallelism as he repeats syntax in both clauses of the line, “thee and thine” and
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