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The speaker then chooses two other bits of information that help him show the drama and depth of awe he has felt with this new, improved translation. He compares that feeling to the feeling of an astronomer as the scientist watches while "a new planet swims" into view. Henry James refers to Keats's sonnet in Book 2 of The Golden Bowl , in his description of Adam Verver's discovery of his passion for collecting objects of art. Edgar Allan Poe was inspired by Keats's writing about the discovery of Uranus when he wrote his early poem "Al Aaraaf" . As is typical of sonnets in English, the metre is iambic pentameter though not all of the lines scan perfectly .
The next morning the friend found this sonnet at the breakfast table at 10 O’clock, expressing Keats’s feelings on first looking at Chapman’s Homer. The poet says that he experienced new sensations on reading Homer in Chapman’s translation. “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” is a popular sonnet by Romantic poet John Keats. The story surrounding the poem’s creation is perhaps just as famous as the poem itself.
The Full Text of “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer”
After reading the poem Keats feels he has transcended the role of a passive viewer of literature and believes that he can create his own great works. In essence, Chapman’s version of Homer’s work leaves Keats inspired to think and create. This inspiration is evidenced not only by the fact that he stayed up all night thinking about the translation, thus engaging in philosophical/intellectual discourse over the translation, but that he drafted the sonnet by the very next morning. Keats is reinforcing the vastness of Homer’s legacy and his admiration – not only was it rich, but prolific, a trait which he very much wanted to emulate. To emphasise the extent of Homers genius and his literary accomplishments, Keats modifies “expanse” with an adjective which also means “extensive”, “wide”, to reinforce how limitless his intellect was.
They were tongue-tied with amazement while they were on a summit in the Isthmus of Panama. Keats’s reading of Chapman’s Homer unfolds new worlds of imagination and fancy to him. His readings of classics had been like traveling in the different countries of the mind.
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer”
This represents the come down from the white hot excitement upon first reading Chapman’s Homer, to the quiet, pensive, yet still dumb-stuck speechlessness Keats would later on experience. Again, Keats is conveying that the English language is limiting and reluctant to allow you to fully express and communicate the impact of profound moments such as this. He has often been told that among the vast lands of literature, Homer too rules a significant region i.e. he too has contributed distinguished literature in the literary world. However, the poet, in spite of knowing about him could not go deep into the intellectual enrichment of his works.
Chapman was a contemporary of Shakespeare in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Shakespeare actually probably read Chapman's translations; that's probably where he got his Homer. John Keats wrote a poem called 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer.' Explore why Keats wrote this sonnet, what the structure, subject, and meaning of it is, and also discover the features of a sonnet. On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer was the second poem that John Keats (1795–1821) had published, although it was far from being the first that he had written.
Related summaries: books by John Keats
I am a retired librarian, living in a village in Leicestershire. I write fiction and poetry, plus articles on literature, history, and much more besides. Keats and his readers are truly in a new world – a rather cinematic one.
For him, the discovery of Homer as translated by Chapman provides the same kind of overwhelming excitement felt by an astronomer who has discovered a new planet or by Cortez when he first saw the Pacific from a summit in Central America. This poem is a Petrarchan sonnet, also known as an Italian sonnet, divided into an octave and a sestet, with a rhyme scheme of a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a-c-d-c-d-c-d. After the main idea has been introduced and the image played upon in the octave, the poem undergoes a volta, a change in the persona's train of thought.
Keats Tweets a Sonnet
Britannica is the ultimate student resource for key school subjects like history, government, literature, and more. Whereas Pope and Dryden were classical scholars as well as writers, Chapman was a working playwright. Chapman’s translations are less elegant and smooth than Pope’s, but what they lose in sophistication they arguably make up for in vigor. These two analogies are linked subtly through Keats’s use of the word ‘swims’ (‘a new planet swims into his ken’), with this watery word leading into the description of Cortez staring at the Pacific. Certain critics have posited the notion that the employment of the name "Cortez" suits the rhythm of the line better than the accurate name. They are thus willing to forsake the accuracy of history for the aesthetics of art—an unfortunate and even dangerous stance, which damages the reputation of both art and history.
Considered the poet’s first mature poem, the sonnet was inspired by Keats’s having pored over a 1616 folio edition of George Chapman’s English translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The speaker offers an interesting speculation about this delight in having discovered the Chapman translation. He is likely attempting to demonstrate both his knowledge of science and history with such musing upon his own enthusiasm.
In his imagination, he has also been to the world of the romances delineating the tales of myth related to the people of the romantically enchanting islands on the western coast of England and Scotland such as Hebrides and others. John Keats was born in London on 31 October 1795, the eldest of Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats’s four children. Although he died at the age of twenty-five, Keats had perhaps the most remarkable career of any English poet.
Cortez and his men, while standing on a peak of Darien, were quite surprised after seeing the vista of Oceans on either side of the mountain. This essay on “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer” by John Keats was written and submitted by your fellow student. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. It was Balboa who did that first; who stood and saw the Pacific Ocean.
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