Comparison of Tennyson's Ulysses and Keats' on First Looking into Chapman's Homer

When we think about author and reader in tandem, a question or issue often comes immediately to a head: should the reader’s interpretation of a text take precedence over authorial authority? This question seems particularly pertinent with regards to both Tennyson and Keats’ poems which draw upon Homer’s writings in various ways for their own purposes. The idea of echoing is particularly helpful in relation to the two texts, where ‘echo’ refers to a repetition or replication of an original thing over a period of time, which becomes distorted and changed in this repetition. In the echo, the author is often lost; an idea that both Tennyson and Keats are exploring in their respective poems.Whilst the speaker in ‘On First…’ experiences an epiphany thanks to Chapman’s echo of Homer, Ulysses’ name is echoed through time but has left the ageing man behind, no longer fitting what the name ‘Ulysses’ has come to signify.

Indeed, names are of great importance in both poems, particularly ‘Homer’ in Keats’ sonnet and ‘Ulysses’ in Tennyson’s work. ‘Ulysses’ is a character who has been recycled throughout literature’s history, and Tennyson joins the ranks of writers who borrow Homer’s (though Latinated here) character here. However, what is unusual about his depiction of Ulysses here is that he does not correspond to the daring, heroic portrait most readers are accustomed to. Rather, he is a ‘grey spirit;’ and an ‘idle king’ who has ceased to do anything of great note or excitement. There is a tension in the poem between this reality and the Ulysses who was famed for his perilous expeditions around the globe, which Ulysses the man is painfully aware of, commenting of his people ‘they know not me’, and lamenting ‘I am become a name’. These two lines are particularly illuminating in terms of the man Ulysses’ attachment to the legendary figure which his name presupposes. His assertion that his people don’t know him, yet his name retains great prestige highlights the detachment of ‘author’ from ‘work’ in a broad sense, as the name ‘Ulysses’ has acquired a kind of autonomy of its own with heroic attributes awarded to it. Because Ulysses the man no longer fits this mold, Tennyson imagines the man becoming separated from the travels he went on as the author becomes separated from the text once the reader echoes their thoughts in an individual way; it would be easy to forget that Ulysses is not originally Tennyson’s character when Homer’s name appears nowhere in the poem. The ‘charm’ of the poem lies in Tennyson’s extension of Homer’s character and the self aware imagining that Ulysses could envision his name echoed through literature and history whilst he outgrew and became separated from it.

The levels in Keats’ sonnet are slightly more complex than in Tennyson’s poem. The speaker describes the experience of reading Chapman’s version of Homer’s work. Of particular interest is the title, ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’, where Chapman syntactically possesses Homer and thus is awarded a position of power and prestige over him, and indeed the speaker describes Chapman’s voice as ‘loud’, reaching him in a way that Homer did not. On lines five and six, ‘of one wide expanse had I been told/That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne’, the speaker addresses the assumption that the original text, attributed to the original author should take ultimate priority. ‘Deep-browed’ and ‘rule’ create the impression of the author aggressively regulating the work, with ‘had I been told’ expressing the idea that such a ‘rule’ is the standard way in which texts are treated. Where the author (Homer in this case) rules over the text with an iron fist, it is clear that the reader cannot ‘make’ the text for themselves or experience the feeling of discovery. As the speaker in ‘On First…’ describes, ‘Much have I travell’d in the realms of hold, affirming that they had ‘travelled’ in Homer’s work but were unable to discover anything new or exciting because of Homer’s presence. On the contrary, Chapman’s adaptations, freeing the texts from the shackles of the author, allowed the speaker to experience the text on their own terms, where the real charm lies. And this is not merely an access issue in which the speaker was unable to understand Homer, as we see the speaker describe the experience of ‘hearing’ Chapman as like being ‘a watcher of the skies/When a new planet swims into his ken.’ The speaker is not simply told something under Homer’s rule, but is able to discover something new in Chapman’s writing.

We see, then, in both poems an eroding the authority of the author; a process which in action allows a text to be made constantly new and enjoyable with each new reading and individual reader. Both, as Barthes would suggest, enact a “death” of the original author.