The poem describes Keats' experience discovering the works of Homer through Chapman's translation. It compares the feeling to an astronomer discovering a new planet or Cortez staring at the vast Pacific Ocean. Reading Chapman allowed Keats to fully understand and appreciate the "pure serene" of Homer's epics for the first time. The translation revealed a new world and dimension of understanding that filled Keats with a sense of discovery and awe.

1. Romanticism and Romantic
Poetry

2. Throughout the 19th
century, romantic
poetry, became the
most significant work
of the period.

3. William Wordsworth
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
William Blake
Lord Byron
Percy Bysshe Shelley
John Keats
Notable English Romantic poets

4. The characteristics of
Romantic literature
involved an emphasis
on emotion, mortality,
and nature.

5. Nature, emotional
response to beauty,
and Ancient Greek
aesthetics, are some
of the common
themes in their work.

6. Sonnets
• Sonnets are poems which
contain 14 lines
• Sonnets were first written in
Italy, where the poet
Francesco Petrarch first
established it as a serious
form of poetry.
• In the Sixteenth Century,
William Shakespeare
introduced sonnets to
English literature

7. •14 lines in poem
•First 8 lines (octave): formal,
archaic words, dignified tone –
similar to classic poetry
•Last 6 lines (sestet): simple
language, conveys excitement of
discovery

8. John Keats

9. ▪ Keats lost both his parents at a
young age.
▪ Keats’ poetry focuses on acquiring
immortality, the beauty of nature, and
includes many myths and allusions to
Greek mythology and aesthetics.
▪ Keats contracted tuberculosis and
died at 25 .

11. Homer>>George
Chapman>>Keats

13. • realms – a domain in which something is dominant
• Bards - poet
• Fealty – loyalty
• Demesne – territory over which rule or control is
exercised; landed property
• Ken – range of vision
• Surmise – infer from incomplete evidence, imagine

14. •Poem is an extended metaphor
for discovery
•Poem discusses Keats’s
reaction to reading a translation
of the Greek poet Homer’s works
•Poem celebrates Chapman’s
translation of Homer’s Iliad and
Odyssey

15. Paraphrase
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Where bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Keats’ imagination is vast. He has read and
explored the classics of the literary world.

16. •Line 1: “realms of gold”
•Meaning? literary classics he
has read
•First several lines of poem tell
reader that speaker is well
travelled and well read

17. Paraphrase
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
But before reading Chapman’s translation he did not
understand the genius and deep thought of Homer’s
work.

18. •Lines 5-6: paraphrase
•“I’d heard a lot about Homer’s
works as I ‘traveled’ (read)
through ‘kingdoms’ (books),
and I understood that Homer
was superior to all others in his
poetry.”

19. •Line 6: “Homer ruled as his
demesne…”
•Meaning?
•This is a metaphor. Keats is
comparing Homer to a
monarch/ruler. In other words,
Homer ruled over the vast
landscape of poetry, books,
and writing during his time just
as a king might rule over
people, land, etc…

20. Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Reading Chapman’s translation has revealed a new
dimension or world to Keats. It has given him a new
sense of power.
He compares it to looking in the sky and finding a
new planet or to the discovery of the Pacific.
Paraphrase

21. Paraphrase

22. •Lines 12-14: “and all his men /
Looked at each other with a wild
surmise— / Silent”
•Meaning?
•All his men looked at one
another, guessing wildly and
struck silent.

23. Figurative Language
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Where bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Allusions
“western islands” = the voyages of Odysseus
“bards” = Shakespeare? Or poets in general
Apollo = Greek God of music and poetry

24. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Metaphor
“one wide expanse” = poetry, as vast as the sea
“demense” = estate, property
“Yet did I never breathe its pure serene”
Figurative Language

25. Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Simile
“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies” and “Or
like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes”
Personification
“When a new planet swims into his ken”
Figurative Language

26. Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
As the men who discovered the Pacific did not just
glance at it but stared at it and digested its beauty, so
too did Keats take in with full amazement the beauty
of Homer’s epic.
Figurative Language

27. Figurative Language

28. Structure
14 lines
ABBA ABBA CDCDCD rhyme scheme
Petrarchan sonnet: octave and sestet
Figurative Language

29. “Then I felt like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken”
“Look’d at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”
Strong senses and heightened emotions, evoke a
feeling of awe, and an excitement at discovery
Attitude/Tone

30. Shift
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific- and all his men
“Then” moves the poem to the new idea of how
Chapman’s Homer effects Keats.

31. Theme
Think outside the box and extend beyond this
poem! What is the message for you?
Emotion - awe of discovery
Immortality - poetry