Murder'd Men: 'Isabella' and Goethe's Werther.

The numerous resemblances between 'Isabella' (1818) and the first English translation of Werther (1779) can be most plausibly attributed to direct influence. Goethe's novel was extremely popular throughout the Romantic period and was admired by several of Keats's associates. He himself referred to it in 1819 and it may also have influenced two poems that he wrote around the same time as 'Isabella'. That piece includes a number of details that have no precedent in its principal source (the Fifth Novel of the Fourth Day of The Decameron), but which can be traced, instead, to Werther. For Keats, the proleptic references to death in the latter stages of Goethe's novel may have held an especial appeal, as they could easily have resonated with his own personal experience. On a more speculative note, it is worth asking whether Werther was in his thoughts once again in 1820-21, as his own death drew ever closer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]