









































Communication, Society and Media 
ISSN 2576-5388 (Print) ISSN 2576-5396 (Online) 

Vol. 5, No. 1, 2022 
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1 
 

Original Paper 

Capitalism, Colonialism, Morality Renovation in John Keats’s 

Isabella or The Pot of Basil 
Zhiting Shen1* & Dan Cui2* 

1 Undergraduate student of School of English, Jilin International Studies University, Changchun, China 
2 Postdoc of Literature of School of English, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, China; Doc of 

British and American Literature, School of Foreign Languages of Northeast Normal University, 

Changchun, Jilin, China; Professor, Dean of Institute of International Language and Culture, Leader of 

Comparative Literature and Cross-culture Discipline, Jilin International Studies University, Changchun, 

China; Doc of Literature, College of Foreign Languages, Yanbian University, Yanji, Jilin, China 
* Dan Cui, Corresponding Author, E-mail: 492439188@qq.com 
* Zhiting, Shen, E-mail: 1561942954@qq.com 

 

Received: April 4, 2022         Accepted: April 14, 2022         Online Published: April 24, 2022 

doi:10.22158/csm.v5n1p1                         URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/csm.v5n1p1 

 

Abstract 

This paper aims to interpret the capitalist economy and class polarization in John Keats’s narrative 

Isabella. The authors analyzed primitive accumulation of capitalism and the capitalist mode of 

production, the division of social status and consciousness between bourgeoisie and proletariat, 

bourgeois ideological crisis, namely the bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, the authors endeavor to interpret the 

aesthetic poetic solutions that Keats tentatively found to realize the bonding of Lorenzo and Isabella 

and the salvation of the transcendental soul, in order to reveal the inhuman exploitation of the 

capitalist mode of production and Keats’s criticism of the moral decay of the bourgeoisie. Instead of 

complaining and lamenting about the misery and degradation, John Keats pinned high expectation 

onto the salvation power of Greek civilization and British poetry. 

Keywords 

John Keats, capitalism, colonialism, morality, salvation 

 

1. Introduction 

John Keats is one of outstanding romantic poets in 19th Century, although his literary peak career only 

spanned over four years, he complemented the excellency in the history of English Romanticism with 

his long classic narratives, sonnets and odes. Isabella (1818) as one of the five long narratives, together 



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with Endymion (1818), The Eve of St. Agnes (1819) Hyperion (1819) and Lamia (1820) demonstrates 

Keats’s remarkable poetic achievement. A friend of Keats, Richard Woodhouse, once spoke highly of 

Keats after Endymion being published in 1818 with his critic sensitivity by asserting that such a genius 

had not appeared since Shakespeare and Milton and pinpointed Keats’s poems contained more 

beautiful things and more beautiful verses, fewer whims and bad tastes. In short, he deemed readers 

would find more beautiful hopes than Shakespeare’s works (Colvin, 1917). Actually, either in lyrics or 

narratives, Keats endeavored to create a particular aesthetic sense and such trait is so remarkable that 

carves him as the representative figure of aesthetics obsessed solely in the imaginative shelter while 

leaving alone the responsibilities for society full of turmoil and upheavals, which have been long 

supposed to be taken by literature in general and poetry in particular. 

With the researches conducting in-depth, his non-political gesture or even apolitical escapist image has 

been partially abandoned, though not every critic has unanimously contended that Keats illustrated 

partially political involvement in writing or was inclined to apply his poetic works to exert comments 

on the real social issues or practical policy debates as the other major Romantic poets were or as Yeats 

among Victorian poets. Conclusively, Keats’s political thinking has been handled diffidently by 

scholars (Heinzelman, 1988, p. 160). Luckily, the trend of transcending over the text in development of 

literary theories, there emerged a number of thoughts, perspectives and theories containing the gender 

studies, cultural studies and post-colonialism (Orientalist outlook) etc., which offers new angles for the 

researchers to reexamine Keats’s political involvement and they have sensed the political tone in 

Keats’s poetry writing. Some of Keats’s critical autobiographers including Amy Lowell, Walter 

Jackson Bate, Andrew Motion, Finney and Roe, just name a few, have attempted to explore his 

embedded political-critical stands in certain poetic circumstances, and even such disclosure has not 

been only confined to his early poems and but transcends them over to parts and patches in other of his 

typical narratives. Nigel Leask asserted the imperial anxiety existing in Keats’s writing, though without 

in-depth explanation since it was not his focus for analysis (Leask, 1992).  

As one of the typical Keats’s narratives, Isabella, or The Pot of Basil embodies Keats’s distinguished 

speculation over political issues, as for which, the Irish dramatist Bernard Shaw first noticed Keats’s 

implied critical commentary writing of capitalism in Stanzas XIV-XVI of intensive reflection of certain 

issues ranging from the class segregation, the capital possession to capital exploitation that can be 

deeply elaborated in Das Kapital by Karl Marx (Heinzelman, 1988, p. 161). However, Shaw did not go 

further on this and thus left it potentially open for the latter related researches. Obviously, a great 

number of critical essays have come out demonstrating various studies on Isabella, including the 

aesthetic appreciation, gothic exploration (Smith, 1974, pp. 306-308), female symbolism (Lagory, 1995, 

pp. 321-342) , female figure portraying, sexuality(Cui & Li, 2018) and national identity exploration 

(Cui & Li, 2019) etc., all of which involves the social-interrelated perspectives. 



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As a matter of fact, John Keats exposed a series of key aspects in this narrative: the segregation between 

two classes: Lorenzo as the lower working class and her two brothers representing the 

aristocratic-to-be-capitalist class, the lack of workingman’s rights by exposing the severity working load 

and disgusting working environment, the exploitation of people and capture of wild beasts over other 

far-away lands, the capital accumulation through colonizing eastern countries implied by sending 

Lorenzo out for the so-called ambiguous errand. By such poetic composition, Keats illustrated his fury 

and indignation over the social evilness, social inequality, moral degradation, abandoning of the peak of 

human civilization represented by the Greek artistic achievements, for which Keats lamented most.  

Thus this poetic and imaginative description echoed, reflected, responded and evidenced the concerns 

that Karl Marx expatiated in his Das Kapital, in which, he sharply criticized the cruelty and repressive 

impact of capitalism on human beings and social construction and penetrated in depth how the 

primitive capital had been accumulated illegally and immorally and indignantly commented that 

“Capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt” (Capital Vol. 

I—Chapter Thirty-One 828-829). Marxist fundamental thoughts on the relationship of economy can be 

summarized as follows by Raman Selden: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their 

being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. The philosophers 

have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it” (Selden, p. 88). His clearly 

statement fundamentally shows Marxist efforts put into the engagement of poem writing with the real 

world. That is, Marxist interpretation of class, society, consciousness etc., are handy for us to interpret 

the pertinent issues of bourgeois operative mechanism and to judge the moral degradation reflected in 

the social economic productive procedures. 

 

2. Usurping: Primitive Accumulation of Capital and Lending and Borrowing System 

2.1Hebrew’s Usury 

Keats portrays their eagerness and enjoyment in occupying much material wealth and possession by 

describing their pride in the “marble founts”, “orange-mounts” and “red- lined accounts”. 

Isabella’s two brothers are very wealthy through possessing much financial belongings, and readers 

cannot help wondering where their possessions accumulated from. In fact, John Keats comes up with 

three possible modes: inheritance, trade and colonization. On the one hand, they probably inherited 

many possessions from their ancestors, which is depicted in the verse “enriched from ancestral 

merchandise” (Keats, p. 193). It reveals their identity as the descendants from the landlords of 

feudalism. 

Also, Keats shapes them as exiled Hebrew Cain by God when they are found out to be the murderers of 

Lorenzo (Keats, p. 205). In fact, if it is interpreted together with the origin and character of Hebrews, it 

is reasonable to assume that their ancestors were originated from usurer figures of the ancient time 



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associated with the Jewish image represented by Shakespeare’s Shylock featured by his greed and 

desire for money. 

The wealth left by their ancestors can be inferred from the historical development that their ancestors 

accumulated their wealth through usury. First, before the emerging of the capitalist mode of production, 

usurer’s and merchant’s capital appeared in Medieval Western Europe. Usury capital derived from the 

loan system that was initiated by the ancient Hebrews. For Medieval Christians, usury was a sin,which 

is described from New Testament: “But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for 

nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest” (Luke, p. 6, 

p. 35). Jesus himself exhibited a distinctly anti-usury attitude when he cast the money-lenders from the 

temple, while the Sermon on the Mount revealed strongly anti-wealth sentiments as well (Hassan & 

Lewis). It is extremely unjust and particularly unethical for the poor, and therefore Christian doctrine 

hindered the usury from developing nationwide. Naturally, the Jews had often been deputed for their 

Christian king usury, since it was a highly lucrative trade. Influenced by Old Testament, Jews shared a 

common and distinguished attitude towards money that in their mind was believed to be their earthly 

god. However, such pose has always been sharply criticized in the real life and literary works as well. 

In Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, when the honest Antonio cannot afford to pay back his debts, he 

has to be cut off a pound of flesh to make up for Shylock as promised. Marx comments Shylock in the 

“Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction” by saying “A Shylock, but 

a servile Shylock, it swears upon its bond, its historical, Christian-Germanic bond, for every pound of 

flesh cut from the heart of the people” (Cohen,1982) . Similarly, Keats cast strong criticism over the 

two brothers’ Hebrew-like greed and desire.  

2.2 Marx’s Surplus Value 

Thirdly, a significant way of capital accumulation-surplus value, deserves the attention, that is, the 

exploitation of working class by capitalists. Keats did not directly depict the surplus value, but he did 

delicately depict the blood and hollow eyes of the workers after the capitalist whipping (Keats, p. 193). 

The working environment is torched mines and noisy factories (Keats, p. 193). In Keats’s criticized 

tone, the capitalists are portrayed “half-ignorant” (Keats, p. 193) and they only “turn an easy wheel” 

(Keats, p. 193) to torture the labor workers. Keats adopts a simple language to satirize capitalists that 

greedily absorb the blood and sweat of working-class. We can associate the wheel with the steam 

engine that represents the major commercial production tool of that time, thus echoing the industrial 

revolution in Britain in the early 19th Century: the prosperity of good industrial development prospects 

behind untold cruelty and blood and tears under the steam engine. It is of great significance to explain 

workers’ suffering and capitalists' inhumanity through Marx's surplus value ethics. 

The “noisy factories” and “easy wheel” remind the readers of epoch changing and shaking movement: 

the Industrial Revolution represented by the machine invention and mass production. In 1776, James 



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Watt improved the original steam engine with his Watt steam engine, together with coal, iron and steel, 

is conceived as the four main factors contributing to the accelerated development of technology. The 

above four main natural resources belong to natural capital, which cannot bring profits to capitalists 

directly, but the products produced by natural capital can bring profits. 

Further, Keats’s description of “many all day” emphasizes the lengthy of working time. Capitalists own 

the means and products of production but do not possess the labor of the laborer. If a person sells labor 

and life indefinitely, it means that the person is owned by the capitalist, and as a result the society will 

return to slavery system, which contradicts against the capitalist democratic concept of “freedom” and 

“equality”. Keats’s description of capitalist exploitation is still “set sharp racks on workers” (Keats, p. 

193). Since capitalists don’t own the workers, however, their labors belong to the capitalist under the 

supervision of capitalism based on the claim laboring power is temporary dominated by capitalists 

(Marx, 1865). Therefore, capitalists can only combine workers with the means of production and obtain 

surplus value by purchasing the labor of workers. The process of creating surplus-value is the 

production process of surplus value, which is the main aspect of capitalist production process. The rate 

of surplus value is the rate of labor exploitation. In the Industrial Revolution, two ways are mainly 

adopted to produce surplus value. One is to extend the working hours. Since the necessary working 

hours of workers are unaltered, the longer the working day is, the longer the remaining working time 

will be and then the more surplus value the capitalist extracts from the workers, the higher the surplus 

value is gained.  

In addition to lengthening working hours, capitalists also try to increase the laboring intensity of 

workers, so that workers consume more intellectual and physical energy to produce surplus value. 

Keats, by depicting the “hollow eyes” of the exploited workers, attempts to convey how much pressure 

those miserable workers had to bear. Karl Marx uses two formulas to express the rate of surplus value: 

m’=m/v and m’=s/v. Both of these formulas, in different forms, represent the extent to which capitalists 

exploit workers. The vision of workers’ “hollow eyes” probably does not precisely indicate which 

specific operation adopted by two brothers to force them to work, but if combined with the industrial 

revolution in Keats’s epoch, both of two ways were probably adopted for producing profits. 

Through the understanding of the process of borrowing and the role of capital, it is not difficult to find 

that money capitalists, like other capitalists, also gain surplus value. According to the third volume of 

“Das Kapital”, in addition to currency possessing use value, money also possesses use value as capital 

to perform functions. Capital as a means of producing profit capital has become a commodity. Loan 

capital, as a commodity, is given by the money capitalist to the industrial capitalist to put into 

production. While the capital flows back to the borrower again, it is not only the capital itself, but also 

the balance generated by the capital over the value of the capital itself, which we call interest. Two 

factors are sufficient to illustrate the role of loadable capital in promoting the capitalist economy. On 



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the one hand, the money capitalist, like the industrial capitalist, needs to constantly acquire surplus 

value so that the borrower can continue to lend to the industrial capitalist. On the other hand, loan 

capitalists lend capital for the sole purpose of obtaining interest, which urges them to invest their 

capital in industries and enterprises with large profits, high income and large accumulation (Capital 

Volume III- Chapter XXI: Interest Bearing Capital, pp. 230-241). Marx claimed that the capital of the 

usurer existed long before the capitalist system itself and it is an early and primitive form of capital 

(Cohen, 1982). Early money capital, that is the capital of usury, promoted the development of primitive 

capitalism. It echoes that the brothers’ Jewish ancestors’ lending allowed them to acquire the wealth 

left by their ancestors, which they utilized to develop their industry. 

 

3. Primitive Accumulation of Capitalism-Overseas Colonization 

3.1 Lorenzo’s Disappearance 

As a matter of fact, besides the internal way of wealth accumulation, another key way for the Britain to 

become an empire is due to the overseas colonization of British Empire, which also constitutes the key 

part of exposure. While the two brothers managed to convince their younger sister about reasonable 

absence of Lorenzo with excuse of sending on errands by taking “ship for foreign lands” and Isabella 

was seemingly assured and ceased enquiring directly about Lorenzo’s trace though constantly expected 

him to come back, readers would wonder why she could accept such an absurd excuse for the moment. 

If the historical background is dragged into consideration, it becomes understandable because the 

colonization and overseas trade were coming into being and turned to be popular during the end of 18th 

and starting of 19th century, with which Keats could not be unconcerned or uninfluenced. While taking 

the sense of historical situation into consideration (T. S. Eliot’s stand) when interpreting Keats’s poems, 

readers tend to understand why Isabella’s brothers could successfully deceive their younger sister 

temporarily.  

For one thing, with the new discoveries of the New World and the shipping route to Asia, the world 

market had developed rapidly, so that capitalism needed more large-scale commodity production. 

Secondly, the emerging bourgeoisie conquered overseas colonies by force, massacred local residents, 

looted gold and silver and carried out commercial wars. All of the colonial operations and measures 

contributed greatly to the development of capitalism in Britain. The primitive accumulation of capital 

gives the evidence that the history of bourgeoisie evolution aims for and is driven by the overseas 

plunder. The fundamental reason is that the continuous development of the capitalist mode of 

production, which separates the means of production from labor, so that the labor of workers is 

transformed into labor employed by capitalists, and the means of production are transformed into 

capital of capitalists. 

 



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3.2 The Evidence in Keats’s Colonization 

Also Keats implies other benefit-the medicine and fear-epidemic the empire took through colonization 

besides capital accumulation. The colonized medicine and Cholera epidemic influenced the entire 

Britain as well.  

Individually, Keats received medical knowledge and training in his early apprenticeship under the 

custody of Abbey. So it is natural for the poet to be more sensitive to this aspect and interweaves into 

his writing. However, broadly speaking, in view of his interest in the Orient and other romantic poets 

and novelists in general, it sounds reasonable for him to transplant some Indian contexts into his 

writing and as a result, he pinpoints the Indian medicine, say clove as a typical one to cure Indian 

infecting Cholera in 1817. So Keats would have been following the news of Indian Cholera in the early 

months of 1818, before he completed Isabella. After beheading Lorenzo and taking his head back 

chamber, Isabella kept his head under warm Indian clove (Keats, p. 193) in basil. When Isabella’s 

brothers deceived her with the plot that Lorenzo had been sent to “foreign lands” to cater to their 

overseas business, their acknowledged connection with the subcontinent suggests that Lorenzo might 

have been sent into the centre of the epidemic. Isabella is right to worry about “dungeon climes” (Keats, 

p. 198) in this context, given the powerful association between the tropical climate and cholera in 

British imagination at this time (Hessell, 2018, p. 214).  

 

4. Class Segregation of Capitalism 

4.1 Tragedy of Class 

While reflecting over the segregation of two lovers by death, a series of factors are to be attributed and 

investigated, among which, the class segregation is depicted in view of space opposition and place 

dislocation. The thick depiction is given to Isabella and Lorenzo’s hierarchical space separation. The 

beloved couple lived under the same roof, but they couldn’t meet each other at will or enjoy meals at 

the same table. Lorenzo could only catch a sight of Isabella “from her chamber-window” (Keats, p. 

190), so this window has become a noticeable symbol of class estrangement. Lillan Nayder once 

interpreted that window performs the most socially conservative function—the segregation of two 

classes, thus indicating that upper class is entitled to the privileges out of the reach of the lower class 

and the consolidation of the social order. It is the window that physically and metaphorically divides 

the public from private and male from female as well as upper class from the lower class (Lillian, 2006, 

p. 189).  

Such a space description echoes the intention that Keats sets his tragic story in Florence, Italy, a state 

representing the freedom in view of social atmosphere, cultural atmosphere, etc in contrast against 

London, Britain, which in Keats’s mind, is a state suppressing the free thoughts and artistic pursuits. 

Therefore, Keats reiterates the cruelty and brutality of such social inequality by portraying the 



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commonly existing phenomenon to illustrate his own indignation and desperation. While Isabella was 

born into a long-history, aristocratic-to-newly-rising bourgeois family, Lorenzo served the physical 

turmoil and errands as the family servant without possessing any financial fortune. In fact, Lorenzo was 

the hired worker under exploitation without any financial possession and was disguised and belittled by 

the bourgeois. Besides, the two elder brothers tried every possible means to marry their sister to the 

wealthy noble family for the sake of adding their wealth and influence instead of caring to her future 

happiness. 

Fundamentally, such great distinction in class is rooted in different sources of income. On the basis of 

the formation of the capitalist mode of production, there emerged three classes in modern society: wage 

workers, capitalists and landowners (Marx, 1863-1883). Further, different sources of income are 

blamed on the growth of the capitalist mode of production, which separates the means of production 

from labor, so that the labor of workers is transformed into labor employed by capitalists, and the 

means of production are transformed into capital of capitalists. Capitalists extract surplus value from 

labor in terms of profits through capital, and workers obtain their disposable income in the form of 

wages or salary that is only necessary to reproduce their labor for further exploitation. Consequently, 

the occupiers of the financial possession tend to control the consciousness. By contrast, the lower-class 

workers live in deplorable conditions on meager wages, exhausting themselves and constantly 

producing products for capitalists, which makes the lower classes victims of the capitalist boom. People 

of underclass are “hands within the capitalist machinery, providing the grist for the mill of capital 

accumulation” (Clark & Foster, p. 382). Due to their low social status, they not only have no basic 

living security, but lack the necessary psychological security as well.  

4.2 Charles Dickens’s Capitalist Society 

Therefore, Keats, by revealing the distinction between the exploiter and exploited, criticizes the 

capital-oriental social demoralizing trend and fulfill his responsibility as an intellectual. It is quite 

similar to some other typical poets and writers before and after him. William Blake laments over the 

tragic fate of the young chimney sweeper exploited by the rich. Also, Shelley proclaims the slaughtered 

rebelling workers in his massacre writing. Thomas Gray assaults the British power-holding politicians 

are busy with arguing for the luxury and controlling, while putting aside the welfare of those unknown 

primitive innocent peasants in his elegy writing. Charles Dickens truthfully reflects the misery of the 

lower working class, such as his description of a remote place in the centre of England: “Scrooge 

noticed another world in England. In a remote place, the ways were foul and narrow, the shops and 

houses wretched, the people half naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many 

cesspools, disgorged their offenses of smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the 

whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth and misery” (Carol, p. 94). In Oliver Twist, Dickens 

frequently takes time out from the plotline to ridicule the middle class's opinion of the poor. In the story, 



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the poor were thought to be in great need of workhouses, echoing what Marx writes in Das Kapital as 

an increase in “death by starvation” among the workers of the city in London (Stearns & Burns, 2011). 

Likewise, Keats conveys his concern and care for the poor and laments over the efforts that both 

innocent young lovers endeavored to take to transcend the class in vain. 

 

5. Moral Decaying of the Bourgeoisie 

Through inspecting the distinction between two classes, Keats aims to seek out the solutions instead of 

complaining about the current bizarre situation. He accused of the morality loss of the bourgeoisie, that 

is, Isabella’s brothers are “enriched from ancestral merchandise” (Keats, p. 193). Furthermore, they 

were more proud of their financial possessions reflected in Keats’ introspectively, rhetorically 

paralleling questions, “Why were they proud” of their “marble founts” , “orange-mounts”, “red-lined 

accounts?” (Keats, p. 194), which exposes their strong desire for occupying the materialized wealth. 

Their consciousness of “class difference” and “desire for money” are not created in their mind, but 

influenced by the epoch spirit. It is essentially the advent of capitalism that shaped their thoughts and 

consciousness, which thus becomes the newly generated consciousness that permeating the whole 

society. In other words, such consciousness deriving from the dominant higher class will eventually 

evolve into the general social superstructure (with the economy as the basis) that administrates the 

social norms and standards, with the case of Isabella’s brothers as a typical example since their greed is 

embodied in the “red-lined accounts”, which is more sweet than the Greek arts and here thus stems out 

the contrast between the fulfillment of wealth and spiritual barrenness of the elites of upper class, for 

which Keats laments most. Such series of rhetorical questions are exclaimed by the fury Keats out of 

his anxious of declination of aristocratic morality level. 

In analysis of literature and superstructure in “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”, 

Marx compares the ancient Greeks who created civilization to normal children. The charm the art has 

doesn't conflict with the primitive character of the social order from which it had sprung (Marx, pp. 

335-337). In other words, it is precisely because Greece is in a period of underdeveloped productivity, 

there is no excessive “division of labor” of capitalism, so there is no phenomenon of unlimited 

development of commodity production and productivity. And when the development of productivity 

exceeds the limit that society can accommodate, the society will collapse eventually. The limit that 

society can accommodate is brutally trampled by bourgeois society. So when the capitalist society 

emerged, people gradually reduced their enjoyment of art, and thus paid more attention to how to 

produce more commodities and how to increase consumption. Moreover, their closer attention to the 

content of “red-lined accounts” reflects the bourgeoisie’s fascination and worship of commodities and 

money. This is also the manifestation of the fetishism theory proposed by Karl Marx in Das Kapital.  

 



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6. Poetry to be the Salvation for Entire Capitalist Society 

6.1 Salvation Conscience 

Instead of blindly blaming them, Keats attaches the importance of poetry as the ultimate salvation. In 

the end, he weaves Isabella sentimentally seeking for the pot containing Lorenzo’s head into the 

everlasting song that is spread for generations to review the narrative, shed tears for the beloved and 

blame the cursed. 

Keats was influenced by Christianity and religion since he was young, and this influence ran through 

his poetry creation. Obviously, salvation is embodied in Isabella. The Christian doctrine of redemption 

is “the question of how Christ fulfilled the mission of saving the world”, that is, the world was freed 

from the bondage of sin and regained freedom. The original sin itself must lead to the hope of salvation 

and a way out. Keats’s salvation and way out are the remedy for Isabella and Lorenzo’s love and 

murdering by his two brothers, namely the resurrection after death and the resurrection of the soul in 

faith and poetry writing. Furthermore, the Shakespearian manner is also reflected in his salvation. John 

Keats acknowledged Shakespeare not only as one of his greatest literary models but as his good genius 

“guiding him” in his own poetic enterprise (White, 1987, p. 7). Therefore, it is meaningful to study and 

discuss the religious redemption and Keats’s “resurrection”.  

After Lorenzo was killed, Keats described such a soul out of the body: “Ah! when a soul doth thus its 

freedom win, It aches in loneliness—is ill at peace” (Keats, p. 197). The return of the soul after 

Lorenzo’s death is one of Keats’s redemption of conscience. After his death, he didn’t retaliate against 

his master, but sought warmth from Isabella. When Lorenzo appears in front of Isabella, he “unthread 

the horrid woof/Of the late darken’d time” (Keats, p. 199). It reminds one of a similar metaphor in 

Shakespeare’s Venus and Adoni whenVenus “unweaves the web [retracts her indictment of Death] that 

she hath wrought” (Boyar, 1972/1973, p. 164). The significance of the return of the Lorenzo’s dead 

spirit is worth exploring. 

This is in line with Zĕzĕk’s “Return of the Living Dead”: The dead returns because they have not been 

properly buried. Isabella brought Lorenzo’s head back, put it and nourished it in the basil flowers pot 

with selfless cultivation, highlighting the disappearance of the physical distance and physical time, the 

eternity of psychological distance and psychological time.  

6.2 Cultural Redemption 

The ultimate inquiry and concern will eventually meet with faith, since life is endless suffering, faith 

may have an extraordinary direction. The basil flowers pot was finally stolen by two brothers, they 

realize their guilt and thus exile. This means that Lorenzo’s murder has been vindicated, and the exile 

is the “redress” for their murder. This plot echoes the first murder in the Bible, Cain’s murder of his 

brother. He was punished by God and sent to another land. But punishment is not considered as the 

way of giving up. Instead, it is but holding on to some hope, that is, sort of repentance. Keats’s inquiry 



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into human sins was conducted under the guidance of God. Moreover, this is also the embodiment of 

“murdering crime” in Western philosophy. 

When the basil flowerpot was stolen, Isabella, instead of seeking revenge onto her two brothers, kept 

asking for the whereabouts of the flowerpot until she died. After death, the soul did not give up love 

with Lorenzo, their love story was heard throughout the city in bleak songs: “O cruelty, To steal my 

Basil pot away from me!” (Keats, p. 205). Keats leaves her at the conclusion of the poem singing a 

“sad ditty” (Keats, p. 205). Similarly, after Adonis’ death, Venus sings a “woeful ditty” (Boyar, 

1972/1973, p. 164). Isabella’s song is similar to that of returning of Lorenzo’s spirit and even their 

physical death, and both are seeking for their love for eternity. Therefore, it illustrates Keats’s pinning 

high expectation onto the salvation power of poetry, thus embodying the inheritance from Greek peak 

of civilization as the salvation for human beings as a whole.  

 

7. Conclusion 

Nothing is absolutely fair or beautiful, which is why Keats devoted the social inequality and vaunted 

pride in such a tragic love affair, and also tried to extricate oppression through the salvation of 

transcendence and exile. Isabella as well as his other collections Lamia, The Eve of St. Agnes were 

published in the same year. These late poems were more mature in writing than the poems created in 

the earlier period, and can better demonstrate Keats’s unique creation style. 

 

Acknowledgement 

I would like to take this opportunity to extend my sincere gratitude towards my supervisor Dan Cui, the 

Dean of Institute of International Language and Culture at Jilin International Studies University, for her 

academic rigor, inspiring instruction, penetrative guidance and patient tolerance, which has benefited 

me tremendously. I would also like to express my gratitude to my senior student, Jiayu Peng, for her 

academic assistance and certainly my parents for their everlasting supporting and encouraging me in 

my academic pursuing. 

 

References 

Boyar, B. T. (1972). Keats’s “Isabella”: Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis” and the Venus-Adonis Myth. 

Keats-Shelley Journal, 21, 160-169. 

Cohen, W. (1982). The Merchant of Venice and the Possibilities of Historical Criticism. ELH, 49(4), 

772. 

Cui, D. (2019) “Anxiety and Transcendence: A Study of John Keats’s Writing of Identities”, Ph. D 

Dissertation. 

Dickens, C. (1962). A Christmas Carol. New York: Scholastics Book Services. 



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Forman, M. B. (2010). The Letters of John Keats. Watson Press. 

Hessell, N. (2018). Romantic Literature and the Colonized World: Lessons from Indigenous 

Translations. Springer. 

Lagory, M. (1995). “Wormy Circumstance: Symbolism in Keats’s ‘ Isabella’”. Studies in Romanticism, 

321-342. 

Leask, N. (1992). British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press. 

Lillian, N. (2006). The Threshold of an Open Window’s Transparency, Opacity, and Social Boundaries 

in Aurora Floyd. In K. Harrison, & R. Fantina (Eds.), Victorian Sensations: Essays on a 

Scandalous Genre (p. 189). Columbus: The Ohio State University Press. 

Marx, K. (1968). Selected Works [of] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (Vol. 1). Progress. 

Marx, K. (1969). Wage-Labor and Capital and Value Price and Profit (1865). New York: International 

Co. 

Marx, K. (1859). Translated by Nahum Isaac StoneA Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 

335-337. 

Marx, K., & Fredrick, E. (Ed.). (1887). S. Moore, & Ed. Aveling (Trans.), Capital, Volume I. Progress 

Publishers, Moscow, USSR. 

Marx, K. E., & Friedrich (Eds.). (1894). Capital Volume III (p. 52). International Publishers, NY. 

Selden, R., Widdowson, P., & Brooker, P. (2013). A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. 

Routledge. 

Sidney, C. (1917). John Keats: His Life and Poetry, his friends, Critics, and after-Fame (Chapter V, pp. 

130-135). Retrieved June 8, 2011, from 

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36356/pg36356-images.html#page164 

Smith, L. Z. (1974). The Material Sublime: Keats and “Isabella”. Studies in Romanticism, 299-311. 

Stearns, A. E., & Burns, T. J. (2011). About the human condition in the works of Dickens and Marx (p. 

5). CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 13(4), 10. 

White, R. S. (1987). Keats as a Reader of Shakespeare. A&C Black. Retrieved from 

https://search.ecnu.cf/extdomains/books.google.com/books/about/Keats_as_a_Reader_of_Shakesp

eare.html?id=KD2tAwAAQBAJ 

 

Note(s) 

Note 1. Das Kapital, also known as Capital. First edition in English of Das Kapital was overseen by 

Engels and translated by Samuel Moore and Marx's son-in-law Edward Aveling. This edition only 

contains book I. Although Engels had already published the German edition of Volume II in 1885, he 

https://en.wikisource.ahmu.cf/wiki/Author:Nahum_Isaac_Stone


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states in the preface, that a translation of it without volume III would be incomplete; the German 

edition of volume III did not appear until 1894. 

Note 2. Benjamin Bailey met Keats in early March 1817, shortly after Keats’s volume was came out. 

He introduced his friend Messrs Taylor to Keats in order to help Keats to publish his works. Messrs 

Taylor was the editor as well as publisher of the London magazine. He had an intimate friend Richard 

Woodhouse, who was a accomplished solicitor at a high position. Taylor then introduced the talented 

poet John Keats to Woodhouse. Keats’s new friendships with Benjamin Bailey, John Taylor, and 

Richard Woodhouse were thus formed. Woodhouse started to collect Keatsiana, documenting as much 

as he could about the poetry. 

Note 3. “Marx/Engels Collected Works” contains Marx's economic essay “Wage Labour and Capital”, 

which was published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in April 1849. Frederick Engels edited and 

translated his article into English. In the article, Marx pointed out that when the labor of the laborer 

begins, the labor force no longer belongs to him. He could sell his future labor-that is, to undertake the 

obligation to complete a certain job within a certain period of time. He hires out or sells his labor power, 

but this labor power has grown up with this person and is inseparable from it. Labor-power is a very 

peculiar commodity in capitalist society. It has the characteristics of being a value creation force and a 

source of value. Moreover, if handled properly, its source of value will exceed its own value. 

Note 4. When capitalist start to make a product, they initially put spend money on two inputs: constant 

capital and variable capital. Constant capital (v) is the amount of capital invested in raw materials and 

labor materials. Variable capital (v) is the amount of capital used to purchase labor. At first, the 

accumulation of capital (C) is constant capital plus variable capital: C=c+v. Therefore, to determine the 

intensity of capitalist exploitation of workers is to calculate the rate of surplus value. The rate of 

surplus value (m') is a ratio of surplus value (m) to necessary labor time (v).The equation is : m' = m/v. 

Working day has two parts: one is necessary time(s), another one is surplus labor time(v) which 

produces value for capitalists. Besides, the rate of surplus value can also be expressed by the ratio of 

surplus labor to necessary labor, or the ratio of surplus labor time to necessary labor time: m'= s/v. 

Note 5. This paper is the periodical research result of Project on “The Anxiety and Transcendence of 

John Keats’s Individual Identity Construction” sponsored by National Social Science Foundation of 

China (21FWWB015); of Project on “A Study of the Construction of John Keats’s National Identity” 

sponsored by the fellowship of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No: 2021M700496); of Project 

on “A Study of the John Keats’s National Identity Writing” sponsored by Social Science Foundation of 

Jilin Province; of Project on “A Study of English Major Course System Construction With Value 

Shaping Based on ‘Global Village’ as the Foreign Language Lab” sponsored by the Academy of 

Foreign Language Teaching Attached to the Institute of Higher Education of China 



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(No:21WYJYZD08); of Project on “A Study of Routes Applied to Cultivate the Inter-cultural 

Competence of English Major Students” (No: GJJX20201130). 


