Formalist/New Critical Reading of Keats

Keat’s poem, “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer” is a poem of discovery. The opening line, “Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold” establishes the narrator of the poem as an explorer—but he may not have been to the places that he describes in the poem. Instead, he has experienced them vicariously, through the works of Homer or, most importantly, of Chapman’s translation of Homer.
When the poem reaches Chapman, the topic becomes rediscovery; the narrator experiences the islands of Greece for the first time. Ambiguity thus is of utmost importance in the poem, as the poem does not specify whether the narrator has been to the lands described earlier, or if he has only read about them. Both seem to be possible. The line, “Oft of one wide expanse, had I been told” could be read as either the narrator being told the history of the expanse while present there, or hearing the expanse described elsewhere. If the former is true, the work of Chapman becomes even more remarkable, as the narrator experiences the places more vividly when Chapman describes them than when he actually traveled to them. The paradox of multiple readings is essential to Formalist understanding of a work. The text does not explicitly say who the narrator is, or whether he has actually been to Greece himself. To assume that he has or has not is, from a New Critical point of view, fallacious. To even assume that this is Keats speaking is fallacious if the poem does not spell this out. Even if Keats says that this poem is written explicitly from his point of view, it does not matter. The author’s opinion on the meaning of the work is not privileged over anyone else’s. There is only the text, and nothing more.
The language of the poem further reinforces the theme of discovery, while reinforcing the paradoxes present within those themes. The narrator invokes the lands of the Greeks, an astronomer discovering a new planet, and Cortez’s presence in the New World. At first, the language of the poem almost seems as if the narrator has experienced the land of Homer’s epics personally—perhaps to the point where he may actually be the subject of said poems. The flowery language seems to be evocative of an ancient epic, calling upon the “bards in fealty to Apollo” and “realms of gold.” But the mention of Homer, and later of Chapman, seems to break this illusion.
The narrator speaks of everything in such a literal fashion it is hard to determine; for example, the poem describes Chapman speaking “loud and bold” while referencing a new reading of his work. The poem thus uses language that would normally be ascribed to someone speaking to someone writing. Not only does he speak, he speaks out loud. By blurring the line between reading a text and hearing it spoken aloud, the poem reinforces how Chapman’s translation is like going to a place for the first time. This is the purpose that all of the ambiguities in the poem serve. Reading about a place is not the same as actually visiting a place, but by describing them in similar ways, the poem reinforces how amazing Chapman’s work actually was.
Discovery is the central factor of the poem “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” The poet discovers new places, and discovers a new translation of Homer. Homer’s work is itself about discovery. All these different ideas are blurred together in order to reinforce how amazing the translation is, to the point where finding Chapman’s translation stands side by side with finding a new planet or a finding new continent.