Ode on a Grecian Urn

Study Guide

Literary Devices

Setting

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Literary Devices Setting

“Ode on a Grecian Urn” doesn’t have a concrete setting. Given that the speaker is examining an ancient piece of pottery, we might infer that they’re in a museum. Keats himself knew about such urns from his frequent visits to the British Museum. That said, the speaker could just as well be viewing an urn that belongs in a wealthy collector’s private gallery. The truth is, we don’t know where the speaker is because they haven’t told us. And in any case, what’s most important isn’t where the urn is located; it’s the urn itself, and the pastoral scenes depicted on its surface. As the speaker examines the urn’s decorative paintings, they feel drawn into an imaginary world of “leaf-fring’d legend” (line 5). This world is inhabited by happy figures situated in a valley that the speaker associates with both “Tempe” and “Arcady” (line 7). Each of these references invokes the pastoral ideal of Greek myth, suggesting a place where all the cares and complications of life melt away. It is this imagined environment that stands at the heart of Keats’s poem. The timeless nature of this world entrances the speaker, even as they ultimately acknowledge its shortcomings.

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