John Keats was fascinated by the art and literature of the ancient world. Just before his twenty-first birthday, he read George Chapman’s translation of Homer. He wrote a famous sonnet on the subject. The next year, he visited the the Elgin Marbles. The painter Benjamin Haydon accompanied him. This developed his enthusiasm still further. He wrote another notable poem after the visit. But his Greece was essentially a Greece of the imagination. It was the Greece of John Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary. This he had read when young. He never visited Greece.
Although John Keats had been fascinated by the art and literature of the ancient world ever since he read George Chapman’s translation of Homer (which produced a famous sonnet on the subject) just before his twenty-first birthday in October 1816, and had that enthusiasm further developed by his visit to the Elgin Marbles with the painter Benjamin Haydon the following year (which also produced a notable poem), his Greece was essentially a Greece of the imagination, inspired by his early reading of John Lempriere’s Classical Dictionay: he never visited Greece.
Although John Keats was fascinated by the art and literature of the ancient world, he never visited Greece. His Greece was essentially a Greece of the imagination, inspired by his early reading of John Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary. Just before his twenty-first birthday, he read George Chapman’s translation of Homer, an experience which inspired one of his most famous sonnets. His enthusiasm was further developed, in the following year, by a visit to the Elgin Marbles with the painter Benjamin Haydon.