Background
George Chapman was born about 1559 in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom.
(Hector bidding farewell to his wife and baby son, Odysseu...)
Hector bidding farewell to his wife and baby son, Odysseus bound to the mast listening to the Sirens, Penelope at the loom, Achilles dragging Hector's body round the walls of Troy - scenes from Homer have been reportrayed in every generation. The questions about mortality and identity that Homer's heroes ask, the bonds of love, respect and fellowship that motivate them, have gripped audiences for three millennia. Chapman's Iliad and Odyssey are great English epic poems, but they are also two of the liveliest and readable translations of Homer. Chapman's freshness makes the everyday world of nature and the craftsman as vivid as the battlefield and Mount Olympus. His poetry is driven by the excitement of the Renaissance discovery of classical civilisation as at once vital and distant, and is enriched by the perspectives of humanist thought.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1840221178/?tag=2022091-20
2000
(This Edition of George Chapman's tragedy differs from all...)
This Edition of George Chapman's tragedy differs from all other modern editions in being primarily based on the Quarto of 1607 in preference to the much revised Quarto of 1641. N. S. Brooke believes that the earlier text gives a more certain indication of Chapman's intentions and he has supported this view in an introduction and by a bibliographical and critical study of the play. The divergence between the texts of 1607 and 1641 are set out clearly in this volume, which includes the usual textual and critical apparatus found in the Revels series.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0719056969/?tag=2022091-20
(An anthology containing a selection of George Chapman's p...)
An anthology containing a selection of George Chapman's poetry and plays, including Bussy D'Ambois, All Fooles, and the Widdowes Teares. In the PENGUIN DRAMATISTS series.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140436367/?tag=2022091-20
George Chapman was born about 1559 in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom.
He may have attended Oxford, although he claimed to have been selftaught.
He spent a few years in the household of a nobleman and in 1591-1592 was engaged in military service on the Continent. Chapman became an important literary figure with the publication of his first work, The Shadow of Night (1594). This obscure philosophical poem has led some to speculate that Chapman at this time belonged to the "School of Night" - a group of avant-garde thinkers who supposedly challenged traditional beliefs. Although the existence of such a formal "school" is still in doubt, it is clear that Chapman was acquainted with some of the more exciting thinkers of his day. Chapman's reputation as a man of letters was firmly established by Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595) and his continuation of Christopher Marlowe's Hero and Leander (1598), both of them amatory, erotic poems in the vein of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis (1593). He began writing for the stage about 1595 and in the following 10 years composed a number of comedies, including A Humorous Day's Mirth (1597), the earliest example of the "comedy of humours" closely identified with Ben Jonson. Chapman's best-known dramatic work, however, is the heroic tragedy Bussy D'Ambois (1604), which celebrates the lofty aspirations of Renaissance individualism. The title character, modeled on a Frenchman who died in 1579, claims to be superior to ordinary mortals. In The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, a sequel written some 6 years later, Chapman presents a different kind of heroic virtue in the person of Bussy's brother Cleremont, who is noted for his extraordinary stoic forbearance and self-control. Despite his success as a poet and a dramatist, Chapman led a very insecure existence. In 1600 he was imprisoned for debt, and in 1605 he suffered the same punishment for his part in Eastward Ho!, a play written in collaboration with Jonson and John Marston. For a time he was patronized by Prince Henry; when Henry died unexpectedly in 1612, Chapman found himself again in precarious straits. Chapman's literary energies after 1613 were devoted almost exclusively to his monumental translation of Homer, which he had begun many years earlier and which he considered his most significant literary achievement. The completed translation, published in 1624, has been immortalized by John Keats's sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" (1816). Chapman died on May 12, 1634.
(Hector bidding farewell to his wife and baby son, Odysseu...)
2000(This Edition of George Chapman's tragedy differs from all...)
(An anthology containing a selection of George Chapman's p...)