George Chapman - Poet and Translator

Poet and Translator

Other poems by Chapman include: De Guiana, Carmen Epicum (1596), on the exploits of Sir Walter Raleigh; a continuation of Christopher Marlowe's unfinished Hero and Leander (1598); and Euthymiae Raptus; or the Tears of Peace (1609). Some have considered Chapman to be the "rival poet" of Shakespeare's Sonnets.

From 1598 he published his translation of the Iliad in installments. (Shakespeare apparently was able to learn enough about the content of the "Iliad," whether directly from Chapman's translation, or from an acquaintance with what Chapman was working on acquired otherwise, to enable him to put forth "Troilus and Cressida" in 1601-2; that play is remarkable for interweaving the Iliadic story of the deaths of Patroclus and Hector with the quite un-Iliadic story of love betrayed as told first in English by Geoffrey Chaucer in his masterpiece "Troilus and Criseyde.") In 1616 the complete Iliad and Odyssey appeared in The Whole Works of Homer, the first complete English translation, which until Pope's was the most popular in the English language and was the way most English speakers encountered these poems. The endeavour was to have been profitable: his patron, Prince Henry, had promised him £300 on its completion plus a pension. However, Henry died in 1612 and his household neglected the commitment, leaving Chapman without either a patron or an income. In an extant letter, Chapman petitions for the money owed him; his petition was ineffective. Chapman's translation of the Odyssey is written in iambic pentameter, whereas his Iliad is written in iambic heptameter. (The Greek original is in dactylic hexameter.) Chapman often extends and elaborates on Homer's original contents to add descriptive detail or moral and philosophical interpretation and emphasis. Chapman's translation of Homer was much admired by John Keats, notably in his famous poem On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, and also drew attention from Samuel Taylor Coleridge and T. S. Eliot.

Chapman also translated the Homeric Hymns, the Georgics of Virgil, The Works of Hesiod (1618, dedicated to Francis Bacon), the Hero and Leander of Musaeus (1618), and the Fifth Satire of Juvenal (1624).

Chapman's poetry, though not widely influential on the subsequent development of English poetry, did have a noteworthy effect on the work of T. S. Eliot.