Kent, ''On the Third Stanza of Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'''

"Looking both backward and forward, acting as climax to the first two stanzas and as prophetic of the fourth stanza'a discovery, the third stanza occupies a pivotal position in the ode's entire dramatic trajectory" (Kent 115)

This makes me mad!

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/AngelaPalumbo/2009/02/an_insult_to_keats.html

“Walter Jackson bate suggests that the fact of repetition may spring from the poet’s envy or the happiness the figures on the urn appear to be experiencing, although “envy” is precisely what Keats repudiates as a motive in the similarly empathic experience of the companion “Ode to a Nightingale.’” (114 Kent)

"'Rayan has more recently claimed that the repetitions in the stanza charm the reader 'into forgetting the main argument' of the ode'" (Kent 113). Click here!

“More often, however, the third stanza has been perceived as central to the ode’s structure and development. For example, Kenneth Burke described it as ‘the fulcrum’ in the poem’s ‘swing.’”
-From David A. Kent’s essay “On the Third Stanza of Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn,’” in Donald Keesey’s Context for Criticism, page 113.
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/EricaGearhart/2009/02/a_example_of_style_and_organiz.html

babble, babble, babble...
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/BethanyMerryman/2009/02/babble-babble-and-then-some-mo.html

If Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder, then a Beholder is Required
“Both urn and ode are finally dependent on a beholder, a reader, to give life to image and typographical symbol—to animate by imagination…All art is, finally, dependent” (Kent 115).
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/GretaCarroll/2009/02/if_beauty_is_in_the_eye_of_the.html

Kent Acts Like a Formalist

“When the language of Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ as a whole is examined, we find that it is essentially characterized by interrogative, exclamatory, and phrasal forms. Each of these rhetorical and grammatical modes takes it dramatically appropriate place in the poem’s ‘plot’” (Kent 113).
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JennaMiller/2009/02/kent-acts-like-a-formalist.html

O happy, happy day. Did I mention I was happy? Well, I am very happy. Really, I am.
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/EllenEinsporn/2009/02/o_happy_happy_day_did_i_mentio.html

"In effect, the rhetoric of repetition destabilizes the assertion of happiness" (Kent 114).

"The appearance of "happy" three times in a single line, the fifth, and in conjunction with the comparative ("More...more"), does affirm life on the urn as having a superior status..."

"Certainly the repetition conveys a sense of strain and desperation. 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."