Keats Quick Critic + Sinus Medication

John Keats’ “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer” masterfully employs imagery and distinctive grammatical constructions to depict the poet’s reactions of revelation and overwhelming emotionality to Chapman’s poetry epic while adhering to the relatively strict structural limitations of the English sonnet. The sonnet’s structure is a significant element in the success of Keats’ work, as it allows him to quickly demonstrate his education in Greek and English poetry, and thus establish his authority as a worthy critic for Chapman’s work. His iambic pentameter (obligated by the sonnet form) follows the metrical convention of Chapman’s Odyssey translation and appropriately resembles the dactylic hexameter of Homer’s work; the pentameter’s pedigree as an appropriate medium to convey epic literature establishes his audience ‘s expectation that they are reading a serious composition, where the meter’s typical employment in heroic forms implies Keats’ work would be a tribute honoring Chapman’s translation.
Structurally, the traditional separation of poem into an octave and a sestet mirrors the stages of Keats’ own revelation, and alterations in grammar after the volta, especially in the construction of verbal phrases and the number of actors, emphasizes the power of Chapman’s translation as a transformative text with the potential to deeply impact the audience. The volta of line nine relies on the implied verb ‘watch’ – creating the first implication of action in the poetic present tense, lending the line an air of fresh revelation when compared with Keats’ perfect tense description of a distantly remembered travel experiences at the beginning of the poem. Likewise, Keats’ placement of Cortez before the verb “star[e]d” in line 11 implies the explorer’s role as a performer of action rather than a pedestrian observer of events (as Keats had billed himself in the preceding octave). These active, straight-forward constructions of Keats’ and Cortez’ experience are meant as a compliment to Chapman’s powers of translation and composition, representing the clarification of Keats’ personal understanding of the texts through his reading of Chapman’s verse.
The volta also marks a transition in the dominant method of sensory perception Keats employs when experiencing and describing Homer’s poetry. Keats initially affects a jaded, dismissive tone when describing his wide travels among various islands and kingdoms, symbols of literary works he has read and possibly of other Homeric translations. The textual separation of verbs in “have I travelled” (line one) and every other auxiliary verb and main verb set in the first seven lines of the poem lends the speaker a complex, lordly style of sentence construction; this meandering style simultaneously presents Keats’ experiences as passive and possibly involuntary. The textual arrangement of “have I travelled” and other verb-noun-auxiliary verb constructions in the octet lend the entire section a dusty interrogative air and an unsettling sense of uncertainty, which is only broken in line eight with the phrase “I heard Chapman speak”. The strong stylistic caesura forces the audience to experience the new clarity of Chapman’s Homer translation, and to implicitly trust Keats’ judgment of its quality.
Protean shifts in the number, size, and composition of land masses symbolize the level of significance that Keats anticipates Chapman’s Homeric translation will exert over the educated public. The incomprehensible scale and inexorable nature of the Pacific Ocean and a large planet represent the magnitude of Chapman’s translation, and anticipate its vast potential to transform the English-speaking world’s perception of Homer and his poetry. The contrast of several small countries and islands with an ocean and a planet emphasizes the overwhelming authority of Chapman’s work while implying Keats’ breadth of experience with classical literature and his ability to accurately assess such potential success.