On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Question 1

Who is Chapman? What was the result of his work

Answer 1

• Chapman was a poet, translator and playwrie who published complete translations of Homer’s Illiad in 1611 and Odessey (1614-15)
• offered interpretations of Homer’s ethical and philosophical views in ways Chapman thought appropriate for his own age and opened up the classic to an entire class of the english pop.

Question 2

Context relating to how keats wrote this sonnet

Answer 2

Keat and Clarke read Chapmans homer voraciously untill ^:00 am, after finishing the volume, Keats went straight home to compose Chapmans Homer which he sent to Clarke that same morning at 10:00am. Keats only made one alteration (low brow’d Homer became deep brow’d Homer)

Question 3

Language and Tone

Answer 3

• first of Keats’ poems in which emotion is fully controlled and sustained throughout the verse
• openess of the vast sea conveyed through the assonance of long verb sounds ‘wild’ ‘surmise’ silent’
• clarity of what chapman told him, emphasised throgh the emphatic monosyllables with hard consonants

Question 4

Imagery and Symbolism of On First looking into Chapman’s Homer

Answer 4

-prevalence of a semantc field associated with exploration/ discovery-> this creates a sense of adventure amd heroism

Question 5

explain the reference t a ‘new planet’ in line 10

Answer 5

the words echo the vivid description of Herschel’s discovery of the planet Uranus in John Bonnycastle’s Introduction to Astronomy given to Keats as a school prize in 1811

Question 6

Attitudes towards exploration, colonisation and the British empire when Keats was writing

Answer 6

• 16/17th cent characteristed by a quest to discover, claim, colonise the riches of new found lands
• many explores were driven by the vast wealth o new lands (e.g. seeking el dorado) and the wealth aquired by the empire through exploration was a source of pride

Question 7

why is the extended metaphor of exploration important?

Answer 7

-‘On first..’ was widely perceived as being a monumental point i
Keats literary development. In this poem poetry is seen as the empire of the mind and imaginative conquest - through his discovery of Homer he has also discovered his true poetic self

Question 8

Pope vs Chapmans translation of Homer

Answer 8

• most widely read version of Homer available to readers of Keats’ day had been Pope’s translation was rational, orderly and controlled but lacked the raw power of the original Greek.
• Chapman’s translation was more stylistically muscular and contrasted the elegantly balanced and controlled version of Pope.

Question 9

Andrew Motion on this poem

Answer 9

this poem is about exclusion as well as inclusion. Its title suggests that Keats had come late to high culture (it is On First Looking). It draws attention to the fact that he could not read Homer in the original Greek. It mistakes Balboa…for Cortez, and so undermines its air of learning.’

Question 10

key structural featuress

Answer 10

• iambic pentametre

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