'Strange appearance' : the reception of Homer in Renaissance England
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis investigates the presence of Homer in the literary culture of Renaissance England. It seeks to identify how the Iliad and the Oqyssry, virtually unread by anyone in early 16th_century England, went on to become well-known texts by the mid-17th century. The thesis focuses on literary texts in which I believe Homer's influence begins to make itself extensively felt. I explore the nature and reasons behind such imitation in the cases of three authors-Spenser, Shakespeare and Chapman -identifying what the 'discovery' of Homer's texts involved in the very different practice of each. I argue that Spenser's reading and use of Homer was motivated and shaped by Homer's connection to other authors that were of key importance to Spenser, like Virgil. Spenser consistently makes literary capital out of the Homeric ancestry of his various sources. I then assess the impact on Shakespeare of a culture where Homer is becoming increasingly visible, particularly when his dramatist-colleague Chapman publishes a successful partial translation of Homer in 1598. I examine Shakespeare's possible interaction with this culture by looking at moments when Homer makes a surprising difference to his reading and transformation of other literary sources. I focus on Troilus and Cressida, which, I believe, engages closely with Chapman's 1598 Homer, refracted through Ovid's imitation of Homer. Finally, I turn to Chapman's translations of Homer over the years 1598-1614. These show Chapman developing a very eccentrically conceived methodological rigour, by which he attempts to understand the Homeric texts almost on their own terms alone. He privileges interpretations derived using only the texts' internal evidence, after reading this evidence in ways that presuppose peculiarly strict coherences in the Homeric texts. The results he arrives at are often startling. This is both a process of intellectual self-fashioning on Chapman's part and connected to Homer's place in the cultural moment in …
abstract: This thesis investigates the presence of Homer in the literary culture of Renaissance England. It seeks to identify how the Iliad and the Oqyssry, virtually unread by anyone in early 16th_century England, went on to become well-known texts by the mid-17th century. The thesis focuses on literary texts in which I believe Homer's influence begins to make itself extensively felt. I explore the nature and reasons behind such imitation in the cases of three authors-Spenser, Shakespeare and Chapman -identifying what the 'discovery' of Homer's texts involved in the very different practice of each. I argue that Spenser's reading and use of Homer was motivated and shaped by Homer's connection to other authors that were of key importance to Spenser, like Virgil. Spenser consistently makes literary capital out of the Homeric ancestry of his various sources. I then assess the impact on Shakespeare of a culture where Homer is becoming increasingly visible, particularly when his dramatist-colleague Chapman publishes a successful partial translation of Homer in 1598. I examine Shakespeare's possible interaction with this culture by looking at moments when Homer makes a surprising difference to his reading and transformation of other literary sources. I focus on Troilus and Cressida, which, I believe, engages closely with Chapman's 1598 Homer, refracted through Ovid's imitation of Homer. Finally, I turn to Chapman's translations of Homer over the years 1598-1614. These show Chapman developing a very eccentrically conceived methodological rigour, by which he attempts to understand the Homeric texts almost on their own terms alone. He privileges interpretations derived using only the texts' internal evidence, after reading this evidence in ways that presuppose peculiarly strict coherences in the Homeric texts. The results he arrives at are often startling. This is both a process of intellectual self-fashioning on Chapman's part and connected to Homer's place in the cultural moment in …
author: Demetriou, Tania
language: eng
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/75e08f9c-19b3-486c-8e04-3f0d849d140c/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2008-04-22
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:17Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.11741