(Objective questions)
1. Explain the metaphor “unravish’d bride of quietness”.
Ans: In his ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats finds the urn in a perfect condition of peace and quietness. The clamorous changes in the human world have not had any impact on it. He imagines that the urn is wedded to silence and peace.
2. Explain the metaphor “foster child of Silence and slow time”.
Ans: In his ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats finds the urn in a perfect condition of peace and quietness. The clamorous changes in the human world have not had any impact on it. It has remained preserved from the eyes of men in the lap of time, which moves very slow for it, as a child is preserved by its mother.
3. Whom does Keats address as “sylvan historian” and why?
Ans: John Keats addresses the urn as “sylvan historian” because its decorations contain a description of countryside or of a pastoral setting.
4. “In Temple or the dales of Arcady”?
What does Keats refer to in the line?
Ans: John Keats here expresses his desire to know the exact locale of the scenes depicted on the urn—whether it is set in Temple, a beautiful valley in Thessaly, on the eastern coast of the Northern Greece, or in Arcadia, a mountainous country in the centre of the Peloponnessus.
5. Why does Keats repeat the word ‘happy’ in his Ode to a Grecian Urn?
Ans: In his Ode to a Grecian Urn John Keats repeats the word “happy’ in order to convey his ecstatic joy in discovering an ideal world of beauty and joy in an object of art, where it is always spring, and where love is always constant. He emphasises the permanence of beauty and joy in an art-object in contrast to fragile nature of beauty and fleeting nature of the actual world.
6. Whom does Keats address as “Attic shape” and why?
Ans: John Keats addresses the urn as “Attic shape” because the composition of the urn decidedly displays Hellenic qualities. “Attic’ means Athenian, but here it stands for the qualities or properties of beauty that stand out as Greek.
7. Whom does Keats address as “Fair attitude” and why?
Ans: John Keats here uses synecdoche in his employment of the abstract for the concrete. “Fair attitude” refers to the urn which looks beautiful as it stands to be viewed.
8. Whom does Keats address as “Cold pastoral” and why?
Ans: John Keats addresses the urn as “cold pastoral” because the people decorated on the urn are not living beings with the warmth of life, but represented artistically on a marble which is lifeless and, therefore, cold.
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