Ode To A Grecian Urn
...England. He was the son of a stableman who married the owner's daughter and eventually inherited the stable for himself. He was fourteen when his mother died of tuberculosis. Having been apprenticed to an apothecary at the age of fifteen, John felt the need to leave medical field to focus primarily poetry. Keats's imagery ranges from all of our physical sensations: sight, touch, sound, taste, and sexuality. Keats is one of the most famous for his Odes. Traditionally, the ode is lengthy, serious in subject, elevated in its diction and style, and often elaborate in its stanza structure. "Symbolism seems the obvious term for the dominant style which followed nineteenth-century realism" (Wellek 251).
According to an article found in Jstor journal, written by Vyacgeslav Ivanov, titled, Symbolism, "symbols are far from being an invention and convention of mankind, constitute in the universe, all pulsating with life, a primordial imprint in the very substance of things and, and it were, an occult language by means of which is achieved a preordained communion of innumerable kindred spirits, no matter how these spirits may differ in their individual modes of existence or whether they belong to different orders of creation" (Ivanov 29).
Keats uses symbolism in "Ode to a Grecian Urn" to illustrate his love for ancient Greece.
"Ode to a Grecian Urn' was written by John Keats at some unknown date. "The Urn, as Keats described it, was a classical vase, decorated with a frieze of engraved figures in scenes from pastoral life. In reality it was more than any particular vase which he had seen on his museum excursions with Haydon or Severn. The Grecian Urn represented poetic vision, the timeless, enchanted world into which the artist's imagination alone can enter," as stated in Robert Gittings and Jo Manton's book titled The Story of John Keats (Gittings and Manton, pg....
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