ABSTRACT
Under consideration in this essay are the feelings of wonder and astonishment as the beginnings, as Aristotle said, of the ‘love of wisdom’ and of the ‘love of myth’, corresponding, respectively, to philosophy, strictly speaking or, more accurately, ‘natural philosophy’ and art. By examining passages in classical, biblical, medieval, Renaissance and Romantic authors, we can see how wonder is the poet’s gift to the reader and, for the poet him- or herself, its beginning. The final section of the essay is devoted to a few lines from the Odyssey as transformed in the translations of Chapman, Goethe and Keats.
