Monday, May 18, 2015

Is Keats' poem "Hyperion" a political allegory or a poem about nature and the function of the poet?

To begin, one must understand the meaning of "political
allegory".


Allegory is a form of extended metaphor, in
which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative, are equated with the meanings that
lie outside the narrative itself. The underlying meaning has moral, social, religious,
or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas
as charity, greed, or envy.
Thus an allegory is a story [any text so as to
include poetry] with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic
meaning.


The word political simply means anything concerned
with politics (activities associated with the governing of an
area).


Therefore, a political allegory is a text whose
meaning revolves around the governing of an area and contains an extended metaphor to
describe the political attributes.


Keats' "Hyperion", given
it speaks of a changing of power among the Roman gods, would make the poem one bearing a
political nature. Unfortunately, it was not until Keats wrote "The Fall of Hyperion"
that the poem became a political allegory.

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