Need some Keats help!

[CSSoftball5]

Hello, I am currently taking a literature class and have been assigned a research essay. I was given the poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and I'm lost. Does anybody have any ideas for what I could write my paragraphs on. I've never written a research paper on poetry before and I just have no clue. Any help would be much appreciated.

[Stargazer86]

This particular poem is a paradox

human and changeable vs. permanent and immortal
life vs art
the art frozen and imprinted on the urn vs the active life it portrays

He views the urn as both an art as well as the life portrayed on there (imagining the real people portrayed)

There is some discrepancy regarding the last lines that might be interesting to look into for a thesis.

Good luck with your paper

Oh and make sure to use the MLA format when writing a research paper :)

[Nightshade]

Beauty is truth and truth beauty > it's that poem isn't it?
Well I guess the first thing you need is an angle or question. what exactly is it you are looking at? for instance you could look at seeing how well the peom fit into Romantic ideals and comparing it to ideas of other Romantic poets like Byron or Shelley.
You could disect the poem itself. You coulld compare it to Keats' other odes. Really it depedns how you want to go with it. :d

[JBI]

Look up the term Ekphrasis, and search Shakespeare's sonnets for the quote the ending is based on. Other than that, you may wish to consider the nature of poetry itself, and its relation to time.

[Stargazer86]

Look up the term Ekphrasis, and search Shakespeare's sonnets for the quote the ending is based on. Other than that, you may wish to consider the nature of poetry itself, and its relation to time.


I didn't know that last part was related to something Shakespeare wrote. I had read that there was some discrepency on what the exact wording is for the last two lines (though all versions are very very similar)

I went to look it up further online and found this commentary on it:
"This version appeared in the volume of poetry published in July 1820, during Keats's lifetime. It is not clear that he was well enough to correct typographical errors.
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. "

So I guess his editing abilities at the time of his illness are questioned as well which might be another interesting topic, though probably not enough for a whole paper

[David R]

This particular poem is a paradox

human and changeable vs. permanent and immortal
life vs art
the art frozen and imprinted on the urn vs the active life it portrays

He views the urn as both an art as well as the life portrayed on there (imagining the real people portrayed)

There is some discrepancy regarding the last lines that might be interesting to look into for a thesis.

Good luck with your paper

Oh and make sure to use the MLA format when writing a research paper :)

Another approach would be to view the poem as a celebration of Classical Aesthetics. From my own reading of the poem it seems that Keats is elevating Classicism over Romanticism. Of course, this is paradoxical as Keats is viewed by many as the height of Romanticism: it just goes to show how hard it is to pin down and label artists. I think the urn with its static, eternal, beautiful and happy aspects represents Classical aesthetic ideals. Romanticism is not critiqued overtly in the poem but there is a reference to it where Keats says that the urn is

"All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue."

Goethe said that Romanticism is a disease and Classicism is health. That, for me, throws light on these lines.

David