Homer's Influence Through the Ages: Homer and the Romantics (Lecture I) (Patreon)

Today we’re discussing the re-rising of the Homeric sun and its influence upon the Romantic writers.

The text we're focusing on is Keats’ sonnet celebrating one of the most influential translations of all time: Chapman’s English translation of Homer.

We’ll compare a particularly resonant passage from George Chapman up against Alexander Pope, discuss the ethos of translation, the rise of the artisan translator, how the Romantic poets couldn’t help but read Homer through a Shakespearean lens, and how they sought to connect with what Goethe termed ‘the reflected truth of a primordial present.’

Timestamps:

• 0:00 Homer in the Romantic era 
• 2:00 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer'
• 3:00 the rise of the artisan translator 
• 6:20 John Keats and the Romantics 
• 8:00 the rise of the Greekless reader 
• 10:30 the significance of Chapman's Homer
• 14:00 the story of Homer's Odyssey
• 19:40 comparing Chapman & Pope
• 28:30 who was Homer to the Romantics?
• 33:00 accessing the primordial present
• 38:00 Shelley, Blake, Coleridge & Homer
• 42:00 being drawn to Homer's Iliad vs Odyssey
• 44:00 Homer vs Shakespeare's poetry
• 48:00 metre and the breath of English
• 52:00 the melopoeia of Ancient Greek
• 55:30 deep appreciation of Keats' sonnet
• 1:12:12 questions for you 

Questions for you:

1) What do you make of the passage from Chapman? How does it compare with Pope's version? Are either of them your Homer?

2) Have you had the 'discovery' experience that Keats describes? If so, who provided you with that experience? 

Happy reading, everybody!