Ode on a Grecian Urn Ode is usually to sth, but here it is On a Grecian Urn it is described to somebody else, so it is more meditative.

. a Grecian Urn any urn, not specific one. Normally, ashes are stored in an urn. But in this case the urn is associated with wine, pleasure. So there are two readings, depending on whether you understand it as pleasure or death.

Apostrophe: bride so it implies that it is feminine. And unravished untouched. And unravished bride suggests a paradox. still as unmoving or yet Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time Which means that the urn does not speak, belongs to the visual art. And Time it is old, immortal, eternal.

In this context, unravished connects with Time untouched. Foster-child of Silence and slow Time it does not belong to Silence and Time. The urn will speak through the poem. Ekphrasis when we describe a visual art. This is how you make visual art speak, you translate it into poetry. In Seamus ..., it will appear once again. Urn can break into pieces, it is breakable. So it is just a foster-child of Time. It is not really eternal. Mutability przemijanie. And the question can art be eternal? And hence two meanings of the poem: pleasure and death. Which myth would you think about? Dionysus., but only in the interpretation of urn as a storage container for wine. 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 these melodies appeal to imagination, He uses questions when describing the urn. Rhetoric questions which evoke the notion of a piece of art that can provoke imagination. The urn derives from the imagination of the author. He creates sth with the grammatical form, implying that this does not exist. Sylvan historian nature, forest, leaves on it. the urn does not speak but yet it tells a history. Of deities or mortals, or of both, he sees some figures, but is not certain whether they represent gods or humans. leaf-fringed legend with some shapes of leaves adorning the urn. In Tempe or the dales of Arcady and it is not certain where. So, there are some things described, but with this sense of uncertainty. Negative capability when a man is capable of being in uncertainty, mystery, doubt, without any desire to reach logical explanation. Coleridge wanted to explain everything, while Shakespeare was satisfied with the lack of the concrete.

It is fascinated in the image of the boy and the girl that they will be ever the same. What is unfulfilled is better than fulfilled. So, what is the connection between the urn and these images? What is the contrast? The Urn is static, and the images are dynamic. In the images we have movement, music; in the urn there is no movement, stillness and silence. So the question is about mutability the purpose of art is to capture sth. The problem resides in the frame, the container. The container is as yet mortal, but what it represents is immortal. The picture can be burned, a monument levelled to the ground. The problem of the art the carrying material. Fourth stanza: no one knows what kind of sacrifice will be performed. The mysterious priest with the heifer they definitely are on the picture. The altar is not there. As well as the place, the town. It is there because he speaks of it, only. This folk some people are there. Stacking pictures palimpsest. So it might be argued that Keats paints a picture on a picture, through these rhetoric questions. Supplement another, opposite point, implying addition, not stacking. The first problem is that Keats describes an urn that does not exist, and yet he describes things that are not present on this imagined urn. Cold Pastoral pastoral, joy, leaves, landscape. And cold because it is just an object. Cold form warm image. When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' 50 Negative capability the mystery, what he draws from this urn. What emanates from the urn is true and beautiful. truth as an aesthetic value. He does not want to explain everything rationally, and the truth is an aesthetic concept. That is all. Byron: As the least romantic of the romantic poets, writes a parody. First, remember that the poem is written in ottava rima AB AB AB CC The final couplet to create the comic effect. A mock heroic epic.
All these things will be specified in time, With strict regard to Aristotle's rules, The Vade Mecum of the true sublime, Which makes so many poets, and some fools: Prose poets like blank-verse, I 'm fond of rhyme, Good workmen never quarrel with their tools; I 've got new mythological machinery, And very handsome supernatural scenery.

He is referring to Milton, and it is funny that Aristotle did not write about epic. Milton rhyme is barbarian. A mock heroic epic signified by the man. He is defining the convention of the epic.
There 's only one slight difference between Me and my epic brethren gone before, And here the advantage is my own, I ween (Not that I have not several merits more, But this will more peculiarly be seen); They so embellish, that 't is quite a bore Their labyrinth of fables to thread through, Whereas this story 's actually true.

Milton rejected the initial idea of King Arthur in favour of truth from Bible.
If any person doubt it, I appeal To history, tradition, and to facts, To newspapers, whose truth all know and feel, To plays in five, and operas in three acts; All these confirm my statement a good deal, But that which more completely faith exacts Is that myself, and several now in Seville, Saw Juan's last elopement with the devil.

When could he see Don Juan on the stage. So he is playing with the truth, because he could see it only as a play.
And carry precept to the highest pitch: I 'll call the work 'Longinus o'er a Bottle, Or, Every Poet his own Aristotle.'

Sublime after heavy drinking. And every poet will make up his own rules.
Most epic poets plunge 'in medias res' (Horace makes this the heroic turnpike road), And then your hero tells, whene'er you please, What went beforeby way of episode, While seated after dinner at his ease, Beside his mistress in some soft abode, Palace, or garden, paradise, or cavern, Which serves the happy couple for a tavern.

Heroic turnpike road a paid road, and if we want to tell an epic story, we have to pay a price of subjecting ourselves to the convention. He defines his work as mock-heroic epic. There is a parody of A Rape of the Lock in the quarrel of the spouses. Don Juan is a parody of an epic hero. He is under the influence of his overbearing mother. His mother is depicted as knowing everything, but in fact very little. Don Juan is sixteen, his lover 23, and lovers husband: fifty. He never makes the decisions for himself, not in control of himself. An antihero.
Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope; Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey; Because the first is crazed beyond all hope, The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthy: With Crabbe it may be difficult to cope, And Campbell's Hippocrene is somewhat drouthy: Thou shalt not steal from Samuel Rogers, nor Commitflirtation with the muse of Moore.

The parody of Romantic principles. He rejects these poets. Parody of Romantic principles:
Young Juan wander'd by the glassy brooks, Thinking unutterable things; he threw Himself at length within the leafy nooks Where the wild branch of the cork forest grew; There poets find materials for their books, And every now and then we read them through, So that their plan and prosody are eligible, Unless, like Wordsworth, they prove unintelligible. The inspiration from nature, thinking unutterable things. He, Juan (and not Wordsworth), so pursued His self-communion with his own high soul, Until his mighty heart, in its great mood, Had mitigated part, though not the whole Of its disease; he did the best he could With things not very subject to control, And turn'd, without perceiving his condition, Like Coleridge, into a metaphysician. self communion... the sublime. It is defined as a mood, Shelley: a blessed mood. Self-communion self-exile. Disease romantic idealization of disease. He thought about himself, and the whole earth - expansion Of man the wonderful, and of the stars, - mathematically sublime And how the deuce they ever could have birth; And then he thought of earthquakes, and of wars, - dynamically How many miles the moon might have in girth, Of air-balloons, and of the many bars To perfect knowledge of the boundless skies; And then he thought of Donna Julia's eyes. In thoughts like these true wisdom may discern - infinite striving Longings sublime, and aspirations high, - so these longings are artificial Which some are born with, but the most part learn To plague themselves withal, they know not why: - because it is trendy 'T was strange that one so young should thus concern His brain about the action of the sky; If you think 't was philosophy that this did, I can't help thinking puberty assisted.

DonJuandescribedintermsofByronichero.Emotionalchaosinside,butaspiration,infinite striving.Butheissixteen,hormonesareworking.Soitisnotsublime,butjustanormalreaction. Itisnot philosophy,itispuberty.

If he is making Don Juan a sixteen years old, he says that the ideology is childish and stupid. It would be useful to read Childe Harold, an example of Byronic hero. Coleridges Rime of the Ancient Mariner is parodied in the second canto. Doctor is killed and eaten, as they resort to cannibalism. Digressional poem. You have the main plot, and the digressions. What function do digressions have? Love and marriage two things that do not necessarily come together. The climate hot climate associated with romance, and cold climate people are more reserved. Plato is not the author of the concept of platonic love, it is false in the hot climate. The divorce lawyer.... it is autobiographical. the recollection of ambrosial sin sex is fun, so what happens between Don Juan and Donna Juana, is forbidden in the society, but it is okay on a deserted island. So it is socially conditioned.

The function of digressions: Metacommentaries he comments upon the poem itself

The function of epic The contrast of virtue and passion, virtue is socially imposed The question of faithfulness Romantic ideology He also speaks about himself he does not have wife or children. It is autobiographical but a fiction. The narrator is a fictional character, not identical with Byron. He tells us a lot about himself. There is the plot in which the narrator becomes the character. Byron is aware of the fictionality of the n. - Two examples of valediction in Byron. 1. The valediction of the narrator, he is saying goodbye to the reader, and to his youth. But after this whole goodbye, hello the good reader, we start again. A parody of valediction. 2. Donna Julias letter to Don Juan. Valediction, the Forbidding Mourning So shakes the needle, and so stands the pole, As vibrates my fond heart to my fix'd soul. She does not cry over the letter, because the letters would blur together. It is a convention, she wants to keep this letter beautiful. The constancy of women is also undermined, then.

Concepts to remember (or check and remember): Comic epic in prose Epic Digressions a parody of the epic loftiness, and the discourse of the sublime. The poem as a digressional text Romantic ideology Social satire, but not really.