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April 16, 2009
Comments on Barbara Jones Guetti's Essay
"And I would argue that what gives the urn its special status for Keats is precisely this problem: that the urn "matters" to Keats because of his ignorance about it."(386)
Guetti's essay "Resisiting the Aesthetic" suggests that the true importance of Keat's message in "Ode" is not so much linked to the known, but more the unknown. Keat's poem emits his many questions as to what he sees upon the urn, yet he is unable to understand what the urn meant to the Greeks who created it so long ago. Where one might fault Keats for his inability to relate the true significance of the urn, is in reality the one thing that makes it such a unique work. By relating what he sees and what he is incapable of knowing, Keats manages to relate the very same feeling to the reader that he had when viewing the ancient and ambiguous artifact.
Posted by QuinnKerno at April 16, 2009 3:39 PM