Every Action has an equal and opposite reaction… “wait isn’t that a scientific and logical LAW?” The action of Reason and Progressive Ideas in the Enlightenment, embodies the reaction of John Keats’ odes Ode to a Grecian Urn and Ode to a Nightingale, which reflect the Romantic context of their time. Emanating from a historical climate of Scientific inventions, Keats conveys the search for philosophical truth in nature and ancient artforms to understand life and the spirituality of oneself, which correspond to the Romantic ideals of the wisdom of science. Although conceptually united, Ode to a Grecian Urn fulfils this on an ancient and artefactual level, whilst Ode to a Nightingale manipulates nature, both using romantic techniques such as …show more content…
His subjects the Grecian Urn and the Nightingale are symbolised to convey products from the wisdom of God to challenge the Neoclassical zeitgeist of answers from science. In the Grecian Urn, its personified descriptions such as “thou foster-child of silence and slow time” and “a friend to humanity” reveal the immortality of art, and using it to the Romantic wisdom of understanding life. Similarly, the Nightingale is representing the values such as innocence, which represent ideal values in the human, such as through “Tasting of Flora and the country-green” The mutual use of Iambic pentameter, with the Grecian Urn featuring it throughout, and the Nightingale employing it when mentioning the bird. The rhythmic and unfluctuating quality of this literary device, corresponds with that of ancient artefacts and nature, reflecting the enduring human messages that they give. The notion of empiricism against rationalism, and ultimately Neo-classicist science against Nature and Art, as portrayed by Keats, goes back to the Romantic behaviour of reflection on the past, in opposition with just progression and moving forward as believed in the