2/24/09 Keats, "Eve of St. Agnes" continued, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

Qs on midterm?

summary of "St. Agnes":

• at issue: Keats' view of the imagination. On the one hand, we have a statement from 1817 that praises imagination lavishly: ""I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination--what the imagination seizes as Beauty must be Truth--whether it existed before or not...The imagination my be compared to Adam's dream--he awoke and found it truth."
• The connection of this statement with "Eve of St. Agnes" is very direct, in the sense that it is a poem about a woman who dreams of her beloved and wakes to find him there.
• However, what the poem says about the imagination is ambiguous so far. If we take Madeline to be associated with the imagination, and the Beadsman to be associated with its lack, the two are surprisingly similar. The Beadsman shuts himself off from life an pleasure by an act of renunciation. Madeline, however, is so caught up early the poem in imagining what she will dream that she is oblvious to the festivities that surround her. Her absorption in the dream comes at the cost of connection to the present.
• Moreover, when she awakes from her dream of Porphyro and finds him there, she finds the reality much less compelling than her dream: "how chang'd thou art," she says, "how pallid, chill and drear!"
• There are other reasons to be skeptical about the value of the dream state. Porphyro is portrayed ambiguously: on the one hand, he invokes saints and in other respects uses the language of the traditional worshipful, chivalric lover. But on the other hand, his purposes are questionable: early in the poem, what he wants seems like little more than voyeurism (though it is possible that he simply wants to convince her to marry him), and depending on what we take to be going on when he "melts into her dream" and on what you take the moral context to be, he could be taken as anything from a very bold courtly lover to a deceptive seducer to an outright rapist.
• What we do with all this is a matter of interpretation. Is imagination a cheat which sets you up for life's sucker punches? Or is it the only reality worth living for? Are we better off as the Beadsman, living a bare and cold existence but not likely to be disappointed, or as Madeline, full of life but susceptible to any ruthless cad who happens along? Is there some middle ground between the two extremes, and if so what is it?
• The ending doesn't help us out. The lovers flee into the storm (why a storm, do you think?), and we never see them again to know if they're happy.

continue:

• 37, 38 realization of betrayal, followed by promise of marriage. "saved by miracle"? Is that what happened?
• 39 explains away the storm
• 40, 41 the too-easy getaway
• 42 and the conclusion? what to make of this?

"La Belle Dame Sans Merci"

• picks up, one might say, where the other leaves off--the dream is over.
• why the autumn/harvest imagery?
• 5-7 did she love him or not?
• what's the result?
• Let's suppose, for a moment, that this too is a poem about the imagination. What does the poem say about it?

Lemon-squeezer on "Ode on a Grecian Urn":

• first, literal paraphrase, just to make sure that we're understanding the lines aright
• next, meaning, insofar as the meaning exceeds the literal paraphrase
• qualities of language, phrasing, or verse that contribute to the meaning
• always consider the context--is this consistent with what we've seen in Keats before?
• If we can, a quick detour to "To Autumn" at a crucial point: that poem may offer a solution to a problem that we've seen raised before.

So here we go:

• ll. 1: "still unravish'd bride of quietness"? What would this mean in either sense of the word "still"?
• 6-10: the scene.
• 11-14 why are unheard melodies sweeter? what ear do they play to?
• 15-20 the condition of changelessness: what's good about it? what's wrong with it?
• stanza 3: how many times is "happy" repeated? Does the repetition make the condition seem more or less convincing?
• 44-45: in what way does the urn "tease us out of thought/ As doth eternity"? What thought are we teased into or out of? What is the reference of "Cold Pastoral," the urn or eternity?
• 49 Beauty is truth, truth beauty: how so? Does this seem to follow from what has come before?
• 49-50: see footnote 7. What difference would it make if the quotation marks were not there? WHO needs to know no more, the urn or humanity?