Ode on a Grecian Urn

The making of the urn:

PART ONE
Task 1 (Critical Friend: Isa Atucha)
a) What elements of my poem do you think you understand more after completing the urn task? (This could be aspects of language, images, metaphors, similes, development of ideas, sounds, whatever...). Explain.
 The making of the urns helped on the understanding of the poem. In the first place, it directly expressed through drawings the images Keats' included in each stanza (Including his own synaesthetic images), bringing to reality the images we had build with our own imagination. Secondly, through these drawings, language was also explored and analyzed in a deeper way, depicting every aspect of the ode. In the third place, metaphors were portrayed with the help of these representation of the images, helping on the understanding of them in a more dynamic way. For example: "What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?", this quote was illustrated as woman running (Escaping), and in this way the metaphor was explored and worked for it to be understood better.
b) Has the urn task raised any questions or doubts about my poem that you would want answered? What are they?
 Is Keats' reflecting on his own coming of death? (He was already infected with Tuberculosis)
    Is he allucinating? What is real and what is not?
c) What skills were important for you to use in order to complete the task successfully (which you all did, by the way. The way you worked was very impressive…)?
     - Group Work
     - Patience
     - Efficent Communication (Listening to others)
     - Creativity
     - Division of tasks
     - Correct use of time
   
Task 2

STANZA 1

"Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

       Of deities or mortals, or of both,

               In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

       What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

               What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?"

- Why is the urn compared to a " still unravish'd bride"?

"still" has two meanings - "motionless" or "remaining in time". Time and motion are two concepts that the poem explores throughout.

"unravish'd" means unspoiled - a bride yet to lose her virginity; similarly, the urn and the scenes it represents are "unspoiled" by the passage of time.

- Explain the term "sylvan historian"(l.3)

The urn is a "Sylvan historian" because it records scenes from a culture lived long ago (ancient greeks); and because it is bordered with leaves, as well as having scenes of the countryside within.

- Is it paradoxical that the urn, a "bride of quietness", can tell its stories "more sweetly than our rhyme" (meaning the poem itself)?

The gentleness of the term "sylvan historian" and his "flowery tale" told "sweetly" do not prepare us for the wild sexuality of lines 8-10. (Another contrast!)

- What change in viewpoint occurs in lines 8-10?

The short questions and frequent repetitions inject pace into the poem. Notice how the speaker moves from contemplative observer to emotionally-involved participant with these breathless questions. (We have another contrast - that of the participant vs the observer). You may want to think about how I develop this idea throughout, and what it might suggest about the audience's relationship with "Art" in general...

STANZA 2

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

       Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

       Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

       Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

               Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

       She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!"

- In lines 1-4 I contrast the ideal (in art, love, and nature) and the real - the "heard melodies"; which does my speaker seem to prefer at this point? How can you tell?

In lines 1 to 4, Keats seems to compare and contrast the ideal vs the real, and he shows a preference for the ideal (Which can also be called unreal), as the expresses in the phrase "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter". Imagination seems to be a way to escape reality and this goes beyond actual thought. This ambivalence is a characteristic of the romanticism.

It is also a paradox as the people drawn on the urn appear real and living, but the only way to break their stillness is through imagination, as they are just representations, still and motionless.

- Is the idea of unheard pipes an oxymoron?

"unheard pipes" is an oxymoron as it is a contrasts reality vs imagination. Keats' praises the silent music (from the pipes) as it is more pleasing than "real life" music, as the urn's music is for the spirit.

- In lines 5-10 we begin to sense a negative undercurrent to the ideal, to frozen time. How do I use language to help convey this negativity?

Keats' describes on this stanza a young man playing the pipe besides a tree ("Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song"), who he describes will always remain on the urn, fixed in time like the leaves on the tree. "She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss" This quote presents the impossibility of aging and eventually death. Keats' uses words that express the impossibility of actions, such as the young man was not able to grow old. The highlighted words express these negativity.

"Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

       Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

               Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

       She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!"