Alfred Romero
10/13/2022
Professor Frank
Introduction to Literary Theory & Criticism
QCQ#1
From John Keats’s poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, the urn speaks out of nowhere at the end of the poem to say that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all Ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know” (5th stanza, lines 9-10).
From a thematic point of view, I can think of numerous different ways this could be interpreted. One example could refer to how art leaves a legacy that remains for eternity that would eventually outlive the lives of the humans around at that time period. Another could refer to the concept of humans only being attracted to what they would want to perceive. Either way, the variety of interpretations that could be derived from this ending questions what the true meaning behind the ending actually is. This could relate back to the concept of viewing literary works as an organic whole and perceiving it for the bigger picture rather than being so fixated on one spot of the art. The ending does come as a bit of a surprise, but from Cleanth Brooks’s “Keats’s Sylvan Historian: History without Footnotes”, I later learned that the ending isn’t as “off” as some literary critics made it out to be.
The one question I’d have would be directly towards Keats. I’d like to know his thought process behind the ending he created for this poem. Why end it this way? What message were you trying to convey by ending the poem in this fashion?
