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John KeatsOn First Looking into Chapman's Homer
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1816A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats (1819)
When John Keats grew frustrated with the constrictions of the sonnet form, whose stringent rhyme schemes restricted the tone he wished to achieve, he turned to a freer form of ode that he developed to suit his work. “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” one of the most famous of his Great Odes of 1819, speaks to his astonishing success. Like “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” the ode examines the human relationship with art and the epiphanic potential that lies in the aesthetic experience, and each focus on the productions of ancient Greece. In the case of his ode, however, Keats carries his thoughts on the transportive and educative aspects of beauty further, particularly in its infamous and ambiguous last lines.
“Adonais” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821)
Shelly came to know Keats towards the end of his life, and it was his invitation that brought Keats to Rome, where Keats soon died in 1821. Shelly, learning of this a month later, immediately began Adonais, a long poem in 55 Spenserian stanzas—a stanza of nine lines, the first eight in iambic pentameter with the final line being an alexandrine, an iambic line of six feet (hexameter). The work is a Pastoral elegy lamenting Keats’s death, heavily inspired by Grecian culture, and is considered one of Shelley’s finest works. Fifteen months after composing the poem for his friend, Shelley’s remains were laid to rest in the same Roman cemetery as Keats.
“To Madame Curie” by Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson (1921)
Dunbar-Nelson was an American writer and activist involved in the suffrage movement of 1918 and the Anti-Lynching Bill of 1924. She later became an important editor and teacher at Howard university. “To Madame Curie” is a Petrarchan sonnet written in celebration of Curie, the Polish physicist who revolutionized radiation studies. Dunbar-Nelson holds her up as a model for “[h]ow to achieve great deeds in women’s guise” (Line 4) and lauds Curie’s achievements while wondering if she herself is capable of such achievement. “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” echoes roundly through Dunbar-Nelson’s sonnet and is proudly used as a model for the octave, informing every line. Keats’s influence continues into the sestet where it enters into a complex dialogue with Dunbar-Nelson’s poetics and more openly suggests the upsell of hope and ambition that lies under “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.”
Further Literary Resources
Keats’s Letters by John Keats (1891)
Keats wrote a voluminous number of letters to friends and family, making it relatively easy to chart the last years of his life in which he was most productive. Keats’s letters go a long way in demystifying the poet from the hagiography his figure has since received, and give access to his earthy, striving, humane side. They also provide a valuable insight into Keats’s thoughts on his own writing, and the act of writing itself. He actively theorizes on the development of his own poetics, and also introduces vital compositional theories like ‘negative capability.’
The Iliad and the Odyssey by George Chapman (1616) and The Iliad of Homer trans. by Alexander Pope (1715-1720)
Chapman produced The Works of Homer in 1616, and it was responsible for introducing Homer to much of the English-speaking world. Alexander Pope published his translation from 1715-1720 to widespread critical acclaim. The work became immensely popular and was the de-facto translation for a hundred years, but it is heavily saturated in Neoclassical values and forms. Chapman’s earthy translation invigorated Keats and seemed to shake the language loose from Pope’s establishment clutches.
“Fact-Checking John Keats” by Poetry Off the Shelf (2009)
A short podcast produced by Poetry Off the Shelf, which takes a light-hearted approach to Keats’s historical inconsistencies and offers an in-depth examination of the “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” with a professor of English. Various readings of familiar lines are offered, and the speakers question basic assumptions about Truth’s relation to Beauty, and Beauty’s relation to Truth.
Listen to Poem
Reeta Chakbrati, a British journalist, gives a lively reading for the Keats-Shelley House in Rome, the museum that resides in the building where Keats died.
Related Titles
By John Keats
