Alfred Romero
9/10/2022
Professor Frank
Introduction to Literary Theory & Criticism
Applications Assignment 1
This writing is not just based on the poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by English poet John Keats, but it is also based on the criticism towards this work from author Cleanth Brooks from an excerpt of her article “Keats’s Sylvan Historian: History without Footnotes”. The main problem that Brooks points out revolves around the last stanza of Keats’s poem, specifically the last two lines which mention that “beauty is truth” and how that concept is all humans “know on earth, and all [they’d] need to know” (Keats). This idea raises a question that transcends outside of just the specific poem by Keats. By applying this idea to other pieces of work, one can begin to ponder about the relationship between “the beauty of a poem to the truth or falsity of what it seems to assert” (Brooks 140). Furthermore, Brooks asks if Keats “was able to exemplify that relation in this particular poem” (Brooks 141). The actual relationship between the concepts of beauty and truth may not reveal itself to the reader, no matter the extent of the “study of Keats’s reading” (Brooks 141). However, despite other critics, such as T.S. Eliot, claiming that the last few lines are “a serious blemish” to the poem, Brooks would argue otherwise. Brooks emphasizes that discovering the actual meaning behind the supposed relationship between beauty and truth shouldn’t be the main focus of the analysis of the poem, but rather how Keats’s ending to the poem actually had a foundation being actively created for it within the previous stanzas. Brooks compares this logic to how Eliot viewed the line “Ripeness is all”, in how the statement is “put in the mouth of a dramatic character” and “governed and qualified by the whole context of the play” (Brooks 141). Brooks seeks to point out that these factors are indeed present in Keats’s poem, which would ultimately make Keats’s last statement “not clearly false”, like Shakespeare’s in “King Lear” (Brooks 141).
Brooks begins his analysis by pointing out Keats’s immediate use of a paradox within the first stanza of the poem. Keats stresses “the silence of the urn”, yet the object also speaks the truth as it’s deemed a “Sylvan historian” in the poem by Keats (Brooks 142). Throughout the second stanza, Brooks identifies that the paradox continues, branching off from the first stanza. The actions that happen within the second stanza also start to create this underlying tension within the poem, how melodies “unheard Are sweeter” and how the “Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss” (Keats). There is an “ironic undercurrent” behind Keats’s words that Brooks emphasizes throughout the poem, but particularly revolving around the idea of love and its placement on the urn. The ideas of the urn may be warm and full of artistic thought, but the object itself remains cold and still. Yet, its cold and still nature is what remains to tell history in the cold abandoned setting in the end that was once filled with warmth. Though still, the urn has been telling its story the whole time, and humans would perceive the beauty told in those stories to essentially be the truth. Brooks’s analysis is interesting as it takes an organic approach to the work at hand. By observing the poem as a whole and not giving in to the temptation of dealing with assertions made in the poem “in isolation”, the reader would be able to deal with the philosophical aspects of the poem as a whole (Brooks 152). This approach would remove the neglect of appreciating certain aspects of a poem or any literary work due to the blinding of paraphrase.
Personally, I really found it interesting how Brooks took elements of paradox and irony and tied them together to connect to the ideas of the last two stanzas. Some of the lines he mentions really supports the dramatic build up towards the end of the poem. I don’t really find myself questioning the analysis too much. I too would like to know the answer behind the relationship between the ideas of truth and beauty, but I also feel like we may not truly understand what Keats meant for that relationship to be (extending outside of the poem). I would want to take the analysis towards the idea of eternity and see if Keats hinted at that within the early stages of the poem as well. This would further support the idea of observing literary work as a whole.
Works Cited:
Brooks, Cleanth. “Keats’s Sylvan Historian: History without Footnotes.” The well wrought urn:
studies in the structure of poetry. 1947
Keats, John. “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Poems. Chiswick Press, 1897, p. 236.
