ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -The title of Ian Stewart’s book (he has written more than 60 others) is, of course, taken from the enigmatic last two lines of John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn": “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, "–that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Detailed explanation-2: -To Keats, beauty lies in truth and anything true is beautiful. He loves nature and his touch transforms everything into beauty. He creates an imaginary world of dream where one can forget the harsh realities of life. But one has to come back and face the real world and be in his senses.

Detailed explanation-3: -(’Ode on Indolence’, though written in March 1819, perhaps before Grecian Urn, is not considered one of the ‘great odes’.) This ode contains the most discussed two lines in all of Keats’s poetry; ‘”Beauty is truth, truth beauty, ” – that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Detailed explanation-4: -Furthermore, Keats tackled the understanding of the unconscious state and the difficulty to comprehend its control over perceptions of reality. He concludes Ode on a Grecian Urn with the words “Beauty is truth, truth beauty".

Detailed explanation-5: -To a great extent, they have defined what modern lyric poetry is. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” was written in 1819, the year in which Keats contracted tuberculosis. He told his friends that he felt like a living ghost, and it’s not surprising that the speaker of the poem should be so obsessed with the idea of immortality.