Ode on a Grayson Perry urn - Tim Turnbull

Question 1

Title

Answer 1

• intertextuality - ‘ode on a Grecian urn’ - already setting up humourous undertone
• ekphrasis - art that comments on art

Question 2

‘Hello! What’s all this here? A kitschy vase some Shirley Temple manqué’

Answer 2

• conversational/ colloquial tone
• child star - details what a person could have been but never was

Question 3

‘Burberry clad louts who flail their motors through the smoky night from Manchester to Motherwell or Slough,’

Answer 3

• materialism, vanities will continue to exist throughout time
• western society

Question 4

‘Daily Express exposé,’

Answer 4

• tabloid commentary is evocative of societal judgement
• something that’s familiar

Question 5

‘hatchbacks tuned almost to breaking point, the joyful throb of UK garage or of house imported from the continent’

Answer 5

• sound imagery - load youth juxtaposition
• electronic genre of music - 1980’s
  ‘imported’ - diversity in modern culture

Question 6

‘the screech of tyres and the nervous squeals of girls, too young to quite appreciate the peril they are in,’

Answer 6

• through caesura issues in society are highlighted
• innocence is exploited
• enjambment creates fluidity in the poem - the future is eternal and endless

Question 7

‘pumped on youth and ecstasy, on alloy, bass and arrogance, and speed the back lanes, the urban gyratory,’

Answer 7

• makes the reader reflect on youth
• represents how the younger generation are viewed by the older
• exophoric reference
• ‘urban gyratory’ - a cycle of some sort that can’t be broken by society

Question 8

‘Each girl is buff, each geezer toned and strong, charged with pulsing juice’

Answer 8

• semantic field of sexual imagery
• crude and explicit language plays on Keats ‘human passion for above’ - refers to outsider views on youth being obsessed with sex and drugs

Question 9

‘roulette’

Answer 9

• gamble - representing that life is a gamble

Question 10

‘Buckfast and Diamond White:’

Answer 10

• cheap drinks associated with youth and poverty
• semantic field of urban culture

Question 11

‘donut O’s’

Answer 11

• symbolistic of the never-ending of youth changing and societal judgement

Question 12

‘There dogs set up a row and curtains twitch as pensioners and parents telephone the cops to plead for quiet, sue for peace - tranquillity, though, is for the rich.’

Answer 12

• inner class contrast
• intergenerational
• semantic field of stereotypical innercity and urban culture
• plosive sounds to show contempt

Question 13

‘and so’

Answer 13

• addresses the urn that will portray our generation the poet questions how beauty is defined in society and what true beauty means

Question 14

‘sun a little colder,’

Answer 14

• little acceptance of actions and how they will be accepted in years to come and looked on with fondness

Question 15

‘How happy were those creatures then, who knew the truth was all negotiable and beauty in the gift of the beholder.’

Answer 15

• beauty is subjective
• look at generations in fondness as Keats did in a Grecian urn
• in the future people will view things differently

Question 16

Overall message

Answer 16

• how beauty is subjective and sometimes the greatest doesn’t conform to society’s definition of beauty
• our society has become more materialistic and obsessed with vanities
• modern society and how this may be perceived differently and more positively in the future than today

Question 17

Structure

Answer 17

• similarities to ‘ode’ - lyric poem - reflects something significant
• five stanzas separated into sets of 10 lines
• rhyming pattern (ABABCBEDCE)
• Iambic pentameter
• form is traditional, but language used is traditional/slang
• use of enjambment, adds to fluidity and sense of looping. time freeze - speed of youth