An Insult to Keats!

From "On the Third Stanza of Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'" by David Kent in Keesey's  Contexts for Criticism:

"Yet the repetition equally suggests a poverty or inadequacy in language itself, perhaps implying that the poet has reached the upper limits of his power to articulate his experience" (144).

Although I thought that the criticism was written displaying some skill, I think that it lacked in overall finesse.  He uses things that my 11th grade English teacher taught us to do like numbering his paragraphs.  On page 114, Kent starts both of his paragraphs on the left side of the page with numbers: "Secondly" and "Thirdly."  I'm pretty sure that if I turned in a paper using those words to transition my paragraphs, I would receive negative comments from my professors.  It is not very professional.

The next thing I want to point out is the best way to make an English major mad is to insult one of the greats.  I really like "Ode on a Grecian Urn" because I think that Keats's concept of freezing moments and describing them is brilliant.  When Kent said that it is possible "the poet has reached the upper limits of his power to articulate his experience" I gasped in horror.  Is he really trying to tell me that Keats did not know how to express his emotions so he just used the same word over and over?  Please.  Even if Keats knew no synonyms for the word "happy," he would simply avoid saying it multiple times.  It would be best if Kent had left this comment out for it angers the reader and is not important to his claim.  It seems that he only put it in as a filler, like he had some word count he had to meet and this sentence just put him within range.

Does this quote anger you?  What did you think about Kent's style?

Click here to read another angry blogger's (Marra Barreiro) response to the same quote.  There is a good conversation going on on her page.  Join in and give your input.

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