John Keats, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Daniel Robinson (Widener University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.06: English Writing and Culture of the Romantic Period, 1789-1837.
Vol. editors: Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Daniel Robinson (Widener University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1816

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poem
Sonnet

Resources

Keats’s most famous sonnet, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”, was the result of the poet’s enthusiastic reading of George Chapman’s 1616 English translations of Homer’s epic poetry. Keats and his friend Charles Cowden Clarke spent an evening in October 1816 marvelling over Chapman’s version of famous passages from the Iliad and the Odyssey after having read them only in Alexander Pope’s translations. Just the year before, William Godwin, in his Lives of Edward and John Philips (1815), had praised Chapman’s translations as “more spirited, free, and full of animation and enthusiasm” than Pope’s (244). Years later Clarke recalled that the inspired Keats had left him the …

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1519 words

Citation: Robinson, Daniel. "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 February 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=9828, accessed 20 April 2024.]

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