Appunti inglese, quinta superiore ODE ON GRECIAN URN, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Appunti inglese, quinta superiore ODE ON GRECIAN URN e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! KEATS The substance of his poetry He devoted only a small part of his poetry to poetic form of subjective writing. In fact, the poetical personal pronoun ‘I' does not stand for a human being, but for a universal one. Another feature of Keats's departure from the Romanticism is indicated by his remark: “scenery is fine, but human nature is finer". In his poetry the Romantic tendency to identify landscapes with subjective moods and emotions is occasionally present. The role of imagination It was his belief in the value of the imagination which made him a Romantic poet. The 'imagination' of which Keats's poems has two main forms. In the first form, the world of his poetry is predominantly artificial, that he imagines rather. In the second form, Keats's poetry comes from imagination in the sense that is a vision of what he would like human life to be like. Beauty: the central theme of his poetry What interest his imagination most is beauty, but his disinterested love for it that differentiates him from the other Romantic writers and makes him the forerunner of Victorian writers, who saw in his cult of beauty the expression of the principle ‘Art for Art's sake'. So the contemplation of beauty is the central theme of Keats's poetry, he is inspired by the classical Greek world, according to which the expression of beauty is the ideal of all art. Physical beauty and spiritual beauty His first apprehension of beauty proceeds from the senses. All the senses, only the sight and hearing, as in Wordsworth's poetry, are involved in this process. This 'physical beauty' is caught in all the forms of nature (colours, perfumes..). Beauty can also produce a much deeper experience of joy, (as Keats affirmed in the opening line of Endymion), “A Thing of Beauty is a Joy forever", and it introduces 'spiritual beauty', that is one of love, friendship and poetry. So physical beauty is mutable and is linked to life, enjoyment, decay and death; while spiritual beauty is immortal. So through poetry Keats is able to reach something permanent. ODE ON GRECIAN URN The poet is not thinking about a specific Grecian urn, but he is thinking about a general one. The urn becomes a way to make everything that he feel immortal, as the urn himself is immortal. The poem is divided in 5 stanzas made up of 10 lines each. Each stanza is divided in a quatrain, made up of the first 4 lines and a sestet composed of the other 6 lines. Every stanzas presents a regular rhyme scheme: A-B-A-B in the quatrains while the sestet is composed of 2 terzet riming: C-D-E-D-C-E, the rhyme scheme of the terzet is very similar to the other terzet but presents a slight variation, as we can see in the 2nd stanza in which the rhyme scheme of the quatrain is the same A-B-A-B as in all the stanzas, while in the sestet there is a slight difference, in fact in the first terzet the rhyme scheme is C-D-E like the in the first stanza while in the second terzet is C-E-D so there is a slight variation in every stanza, although overall we can say that the poem has a regular rhyme scheme. General theme of each stanzas 1st stanza Generally speaking there is the description of an Arcadian landscape, which is an ideal landscape where human ideals and nature are in perfect harmony. 2nd stanza Contain the description of some musician that are playing pipes (flauti) and tumbrels (tamburi), and a young man is about to kiss a girl 3rd stanza The poet describe an eternal spring, that it is concerned with the theme of the possibility to make mortal things immortal 4th stanza A priest is leading a heifer (manza) to sacrifice and is followed by a religious procession taking place in the countryside; then the poet imagines a town emptied of its people 5th stanza There is the process of making the urn eternal and immortal, and so our emotions and life. In particular the poet addresses directly the urn perceived as an eternal object. (theme of immortality and art) SECOND STANZA The poet is describing this young man, or musician, who has been painted on the surface of the Grecian urn. (Line 11). the melodies that we heard are enjoyable but those who we haven’t heard and are only in our imagination but we haven’t experienced are sweeter, so any positive experience in our life is sweet, we get pleasure of it, but the poet is saying that the experiences that we have not done, but it is only in our mind and in our imagination are even sweeter and enjoyable. So everything that we imagine, that is in our imagination is far more pleasant than the actual experience even if it is sweet. (Line 12-14) So the poet talks to the pipes, and not for the sensual ear, to play for the spirit ditties of no tone, so our imagination can works on it.