Ode To A Grecian Urn

20 Pages 5103 Words

1) What is an "unravished bride"? Why does Keats use this metaphor to describe the urn?
2) Keats calls the urn a "historian." What "stories" does the urn seem to tell? To answer this, make a list of the pictures or objects Keats sees on the urn. How is each described?
3) What does Keats say about music in stanza two?
4) What does Keats say about love in stanza two?
5) How are the passages about music and love related to each other?
6) Keats contrasts two kinds of love in stanza three (the word "more" appears twice in line 25 to develop the contrast). Explain the contrast.
7) Why does Keats refer to the urn as a "Cold Pastoral"?
8) The urn is a work of art. What, finally, do you think Keats is saying about the world of art and imagination? Is it better than the "real world"? Why or why not?



http://prometheus.cc.emory.edu/panels/5C/Pescarmona.html
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In a paper dealing primarily with Keats's dialogical ability, it would seem neglectful to not start by focusing on the expansive dialogue he continually engaged in with his contemporaries. The year prior to Keats's annus mirablis, he composed the following letter to Richard Woodhouse regarding the identity of the poet:
A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity-- he is continually in for--and filling some other Body--The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute--the poet has none; no identity--he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures (Letters12/21/1817).
This necessity for infusion into all creatures and things in order to achieve some sense of the poetical and "unchangeable"permeates Keats's Odes written in 1819, particularly "Nightingale"and "Grecian Urn."While Keats was writing the Odes, he could not be unaware of his own troublesome health, and at the same time, was entirely too awar...