Poetry, Poetics, and Politics in the Nile Sonnets

Abstract

Arising from a poetry-writing contest on the subject of the Nile, the Nile Sonnets of Shelley, Keats , and Hunt reflect the socila nature of Cockney poetry and at the same time evoke the emphasis on the perceiving subject characterizing the poetics of Romanticism. written in 1818,Shelley's "To the Nile," Keats's "To the Nile," and Hunt's "The Nile" reveal the passionate interest in Egypt dominating British cultural life in the early nineteenth century. The common subject of the sonnet contest was the canvasupon which individual themes emerged. Shelley utilizes the subject figurativelyto create an analogy between the courseof the river and the workings of the poet's mind, stressing the need for both poetry and the Nile as providers of different, but equally important, types of sustenance.; Keats explores the paradoxical nature of the riverscapewhich combines fertility and barrenness, resolving the tension by by exercising his doctrine of negative of capability; and Hunt dwells on the decline of the great civilization associated with the Nile to convey an implied critique of political repression, conjoining poetics and rhetoric to inspire hope for social and political change. despite differences in theme, the three sonnets share an important feature: they epitomize the individual poetics of their writers. The scope of this paper is not restricted to comparison and contrast. An eclectic research methodology is adopted to gain a thorough insight into the differing treatments of the subject. The sonnets are considered within the context of the sonnet as a genre in order to show how thw thematic concerns take shapeand develop through the formal and rhetorical parts associated with the sonnet. A consideration of the history of Africa's interior is necessary to understand the Nile's physiography as described in the sonnets. In addition to examining the ways in which textual tensions are resolved, the sonnets are analyzed in light of the poetics informing them. Since hunt's sonnet has an intended effect relevant to its audience, the sound devices/patterns and the rhetorical modes enhancing the poem's message are also examined.