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It's kind of like when you discover Battlestar Galactica on DVD and you watch episode after episode. You've seen Star Trek, you've seen other sci-fi TV shows, which are good in their own nice, prosthetic-nose, cheesy way, but this is so much more awesome. The speaker in the octave's first quatrain announces that he is widely-read in world literature. The speaker then colorfully and metaphorically dramatizes his literary journeys as traveling through "realms of gold."
Some of his great poetic works include ‘The Eve of St. Agnes‘, ‘Isabella’, ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci‘, ‘Endymion‘, and ‘To Autumn‘. — A review from 1818 published in Blackwood's Magazine, showcasing some of the literary establishment's prejudices against Keats. Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
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In his excitement, Keats substituted the name of Cortez for Balboa in his sonnet. In his school days he had read about Cortez' conquest of Mexico and Balboa's discovery of the Pacific Ocean on an expedition in Darien, an old name for part of Central America, in William Robertson's History of America. In search of a historical example of an exciting discovery, Keats put Cortez where historically Cortez never was and made him seem to be the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean. It is not known whether Keats or any of his friends ever became aware of the error.
It is only after reading Chapman’s translation, which told about Homer clearly and boldly, he experienced the real joy of reading him . In such a world, he has come across a number of distinguished writers, their works, and their immense knowledge. He has even visited the western Islands where inspirational poets like Apollo were born.
An Unfortunate Error: Balboa not "Cortez"
The octave offers the poet as a literary explorer, but the volta brings in the discovery of Chapman's Homer, the subject of which is further expanded through the use of imagery and comparisons which convey the poet's sense of awe at the discovery. He wrote this sonnet after staying up all night reading Chapman's Homer, and thinking, 'Oh my God, this is amazing. With Chapman's translation, he understands why Homer is so awesome, and he uses a bunch of metaphors and similes to get across that sense of discovery that he experienced.
Additional materials, such as the best quotations, synonyms and word definitions to make your writing easier are also offered here. This is also a very visual experience, and Keats emphasises Cortez’s eyes by calling them “eagle eyes”. This suggests that Cortez’s eyes are keen, observing strongly and are paying close attention to detail, just as Keats thoroughly observed all of Chapman’s Homer, so much so that he felt as though he was breathing it in and literally surviving though it.
by John Keats
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.
The use of the two separate metaphors is interesting, as Keats appears to favour the explorer metaphor over the astronomy metaphor. To Keats, Homer is majestic as he “rules” with complete authority over the world of literature. By breathing in the “pure serene” he shows that art, to him, is a necessity, an essential part of his life that he cannot live without, like oxygen.
Keats altered "wondr'ing eyes" to "eagle eyes" and "Yet could I never judge what Men could mean" to "Yet did I never breathe its pure serene". The poem has become an often-quoted classic that is cited to demonstrate the emotional power of a great work of art and the ability of great art to create an epiphany in its beholder. The rhyme scheme is ABBA ABBA CDCDCD. The total effect is coherent and accomplished, a tribute to the skill of a gifted poet beginning to develop his craft.
Unity and coherence are assured not only by carrying the idea of discovery all the way through the poem, but also by using the linking words "Much" and "Oft" to begin the two halves of his octave and the word "Then" to begin his sestet. Keats, in spite of his limited experience in sonnet writing before "Chapman's Homer," composed what is probably one of the finest Petrarchan sonnets in English poetry. To convey to the reader the thrill of discovery he has experienced in hearing his friend Clarke read from Chapman's Homer to him, he uses two smiles that are both beautiful and apt. "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken." The discovery of a new planet is so rare that only one had been made between ancient times and 1781, when Sir William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus. Keats, of course, may not have had Herschel in mind, but it was the rarity of such a discovery and the emotions which would overwhelm the discoverer that counted. Keats has wide experience in the reading of poetry and is familiar with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, but not until now has he had the special aesthetic enjoyment to be gained from reading Homer in the translation of George Chapman.
For a long time, people assumed Keats had simply made a mistake. However, more recently some critics have argued that Keats refers to Cortes intentionally, because just as Cortes had not been the discoverer of the Pacific but had gone to see it later, Keats was not the first to have read Chapman. Planet — In 1781, William Herschel, using a telescope of his own design and construction, discovered the planet Uranus. It was the first planet ever discovered, given that all of the planets out to Saturn can be seen with the naked eye. He made many more discoveries of scientific importance over the course of his life, but obviously being the first to discover a new planet is what he is most remembered for. The speaker thus also believes that his encountering Homer brought to him by the classical scholar, George Chapman, is equivalent to that magnificent discovery of the new ocean.
As the story goes, a twenty-something-year-old Keats read a translation of Homer’s works by Elizabethan poet and dramatist George Chapman. On a night in 1816, he read the work with his friend Charles Cowden Clarke; when Clarke awoke the next morning, he found that Keats had written “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” and left it for him as a gift. The common rhyme is an “old” sound, such as words, hold, gold told, and bold, which define the octave of the poem. The meter is also present in the latter part of the piece with alternations between eyes and skies, or men and ken. The challenge is manifested in the fact that the line number is predetermined to be six plus six, and each section needs to have its own theme, context, as well as meters. Therefore, by understanding and seeing these format rules of an Italian sonnet, it becomes more apparent how challenging it is to create such a poem.
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