Truth as Beauty in Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

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Recorded17 Aug 2020

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Handlerec:10746846

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The poet John Keats is famous for the concept of "negative capability," his description of the ability to tolerate the world’s uncertainty without resorting to easy answers. Literary minds in particular should be more attuned to beauty than facts and reason. In fact, truth in the highest sense is the same thing as beauty, he tells us at the end of his poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn." What does that mean? Is it true? Wes and Erin discuss these questions, and how aesthetic judgments might communicate a kind of truth that is not strictly factual.

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