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Ode to a Grecian Urn (1957-11-28)

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Poster for Ode to a Grecian Urn (1957-11-28)

About this film

In this episode, "Professor and Lowell Television Lecturer at Harvard University" I. A. Richards reads and interprets Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and related works. He sits at a desk and addresses the camera; texts read at length scroll down the screen. Richards's discussion focuses on the relationship between beauty and truth, love and knowledge. The professor parses a number of poetic uses of term "beauty," proclaims that "Poetry, like music, is an art of sound," and announces that Keats's Urn represents "Life seen from the angle of death." Summary and select metadata for this record was submitted by John Marx and Mark Cooper.

Directors & creators

WGBH Educational Foundation

Subjects

I. A. Richards, Harvard University, Lowell lectures, John Keats, Romanticism, beauty and truth, close reading, New Criticism, educational television, WGBH, 1950s television, literary criticism, philosophy of aesthetics

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