GBH Openvault
Sense of Poetry, The; Ode On a Grecian Urn
Part of From the Vault. Part of New Critical Television.
11/28/1957
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 & Mark Cooper. The prime aim of "The Sense of Poetry" is to put great poetry before the public for whom simultaneous reading and listening offers a clearer presentation than either can apart. This series of eight lectures by Harvard Professor I.A. Richards gives background and insight, and will provide an exciting introduction to poetry that will capture the imagination of almost any group.
License Clip
More material may be available from this program at the GBH Archives. If you would like research access to the collection at GBH, please email archive_requests@wgbh.org.
- Series
- Sense of Poetry, The
- Program
- Ode On a Grecian Urn
- Program Number
106
- Series Description
The prime aim of "The Sense of Poetry" is to put great poetry before the large and ?? public for whom simultaneous reading and listening offers a clearer and ?? presentation than either can apart. Commentary, explanation, and criticism have been subordinated to this joint presentation and have been chiefly concerned ?? supply -- again by print and voice together -- passages of earlier prose and verse each assist in the exploration of the poem under study. The poems were selected and arranged so that this illustration by quotation might be cumulative. The series as a whole is an introduction to the theme: "Platonism is English Poetry," and the passages cited from Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and others are among the essential roots of Western culture. This series of eight lectures, by Harvard Professor I.A. Richards background and insight, as well as his dramatic flair, will provide an exciting introduction to poetry that will capture the imagination of almost any group. Program Eight: The Phoenix and the Turtle The most mysterious poem in English, Shakespeare's The Phoenix and the Turtle is looked at in the light of the affirmations made by all the preceding poems in the series. Series release date: 1957
- Program Description
The prime aim of "The Sense of Poetry" is to put great poetry before the large and ?? public for whom simultaneous reading and listening offers a clearer and ?? presentation than either can apart. Commentary, explanation, and criticism have been subordinated to this joint presentation and have been chiefly concerned ?? supply -- again by print and voice together -- passages of earlier prose and verse each assist in the exploration of the poem under study. The poems were selected and arranged so that this illustration by quotation might be cumulative. The series as a whole is an introduction to the theme: "Platonism is English Poetry," and the passages cited from Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and others are among the essential roots of Western culture. This series of eight lectures, by Harvard Professor I.A. Richards background and insight, as well as his dramatic flair, will provide an exciting introduction to poetry that will capture the imagination of almost any group. Program Eight: The Phoenix and the Turtle The most mysterious poem in English, Shakespeare's The Phoenix and the Turtle is looked at in the light of the affirmations made by all the preceding poems in the series.
- Duration
00:29:01
- Asset Type
Broadcast program
- Media Type
Video
- Subjects
- Endymion
- Poetry--Appreciation
- Plato
- Keats
- Ode on a Grecian Urn
- Spenser, Edmund, 1552?-1599
- Milton, John, 1608-1674
- A Hymn of Hevenly Beauty
- Paradise Lost
- Tractatus logico-philosophicus
- Keats, John, 1795-1821
- Symposium
- Republic
- Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889-1951
- Richards, I. A. (Ivor Armstrong), 1893-1979
- Atalanta in Calydon
- Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 1837-1909
- Murry, John Middleton, 1889-1957
- Genres
- Educational
- Topics
- Literature
- Contributors
- Richards, I. A. (Ivor Armstrong), 1893-1979 (Host)
- Publication Information
- Courtesy of Thirteen/WNET New York and WGBH Boston
- Citation
- Chicago: “Sense of Poetry, The; Ode On a Grecian Urn,” 11/28/1957, GBH Archives, accessed April 18, 2024, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_464E208A2C7445ACAA51E935936FDFA0.
- MLA: “Sense of Poetry, The; Ode On a Grecian Urn.” 11/28/1957. GBH Archives. Web. April 18, 2024. <http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_464E208A2C7445ACAA51E935936FDFA0>.
- APA: Sense of Poetry, The; Ode On a Grecian Urn. Boston, MA: GBH Archives. Retrieved from http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_464E208A2C7445ACAA51E935936FDFA0