ABSTRACT

Keats's mentor Charles Cowden Clarke introduced him to Homer in the robust translation of the Elizabethan poet George Chapman. Examining Keats's sources in William D. Robertson's History of America, Carl Woodring invoked "the creative imagination" to explain the process of amalgamation at work, and tried to illustrate that process by paraphrasing the relevant lines. V. Wicker's essay remains the single most cogent argument against the Tennysonian reading of "Cortez" as historical error. Although it leaves several problems unresolved, it deserves to be taken seriously by every editor of Keats and every student of the "Chapman's Homer" sonnet. Wicker calls attention to the title of the poem, which gives "first importance" to "Chapman as the means of revelation": "through Chapman there was revealed to Keats the sort of eagle-eyed vision that Cortez experienced when he star'd at', not discovered, the Pacific".