Percy Shelley Flashcards
1792
born to aristocratic family in Sussex
1810
expelled from Oxford University after publishing a co-authored pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism
1812
travels w/ wife Harriet Westbrook to Ireland to distribute An Address to the Irish People
- befriends William Godwin and Godwin’s and Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter, Mary
1814
abandons Harriet romantically and moves to France w/ Mary, Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairemont, and Harriet
1815
Shelley’s first child w/ Mary passes away 12 days after birth
1816
Harriet drowns herself after becoming pregnant w/ another man’s child
- Percy and Mary marry
1818
Percy and Mary move to Italy w/ their children Clara and William who died w/n 9 months
1819
Son, Percy Florence, born (only child to survive into adulthood)
1822
drowns at sea
-30 years old, was a teenage hearthrob for many teens
- a political and sexual radical
A Defence of Poetry
Poetry expresses the imagination
“Poetry, in a general sense…ever-changing melody” (pg 871)
- thinks as poetry is circulating the world
- wind, corresponding breeze
- things go through us => we are in the world and things are impressed on by us, shaped and molded by the world
- we are shaped by external and internal impressions which are expressed by the imagination
- Shelley: structural and public => intended to circulate the world
Poetry extends our impression
“But there is a principle…what poetry is to higher objects” (pg 871-72)
- humans are like Aelion harp
- sound the harp makes extends past what the wind blows through
- one of the goals of poetry: harmony => w/ harmony there’s a variety of different things that coexist, symbiotically attached to one another
- poetry is way to integrate different values
- poetic functions lead to new transformation of society => soothes over, propels things into existence
- b/c it harmonizes there’s a political state to poetry => foundation of political society
Poetry and creativity necessary for society
“But poets, or those who…which is called religion” (pg 873)
- for Shelley, poets have an active role in shaping society
- harmony is what society should strive for => the beauty and the truth
- poetry is goal to get us to the beautiful and the truth => gateway to beauty and truth that circumvents religion
- poetry is way to conjure it into existence
Poets as prophets
“Poets, according to…the fruit of latest time” (pg 873)
- “germ” = beginning of the ideas, planting seeds of a more utopian future
- poet diagnoses/reflect like a mirror the present as it is but also is a lamp that shines on the future
- poet can see the seeds that come to fruition => we can’t see the revolutionary potential
- crash course to revolution
Poetry expands the imagination
“The great instrumentever craves fresh food” (pg 877)
- poetry expands the circumference of the imagination => keeps creativity going, makes our world larger
- interstices = gap b/twn two things
- help us expand out horizons, see and feel things we aren’t able to see
“Poetry strengthens..which participate in neither”
- also about morality
- trains us how to relate to other people, feel their experiences
- poet shouldn’t talk about own morality b/c tied to historical context => should transcend daily life and strive for universal morality, conjure up a new future/society
Visionary poets
“It is impossible…legislators of the world” (pg 883)
- defensive poetry
- poetry has the same power as legislators and politicians => as if traveling in time machine from future to us (a conduit for futurity)
- “unacknowledged” = impact of poetry is not acknowledged => poets act upon the world and shape it, they see something we otherwise don’t see
Ode to the West Wind
Autumnal change
“O wild West wind..pestilance stricken multitudes” (lines 1-5)
- wind is portent of what’s to come => large symbol of change on the horizon
- force that poets can understand before people can
Terza Rima
- an arrangement of interlocking tercets (3 lines of verse)
- rhyme scheme: ABA BCB CDC
- typically associated w/ Italian poetry (Dante’s Divine Comedy)
- gradual, subtle shifts in rhyme scheme accrete throughout poem, much like revolutionary change => middle line sets tone/scene for the rest
- to understand prophetic change
Surrendering to a larger prophetic force
“Make me thy lyre…can Spring be far behind” (lines 57-70)
- just as seasons change, there’s a fear of change (politics) => preserving status quo, understands risks associated w/ change
- poet is channel for larger structural forces happening
sublime
- aesthetic category that refers to greatness, grandeur, and beauty on a monumental scale
- for Edmund Burke (1757): sublime is the counterpart to the beautiful; whereas the beautiful is graceful and elegant, the sublime is extraordinary and massive
- sublime associated w/ the limits of human perception => often involves nature and the boundaries of the human
- brought to the brink of intelligible experience, pushing language to its breaking point
- is an extraordinary power that overwhelms you
- inspires sense of pleasurable terror and awe
- a matter of scale - vastness and expanse
- natural forces can’t change it in the poems => Shelley’s relationships w/ nature is the overall effect nature has, assymmetrical
Mont Blanc
Into the ravine
“Thus, though, Ravine of Arve…thou art there!” (lines 12-48)
- dizzying, exhilarating
- something unattainable of nature
- “my own, my human mind” => aware of his humanness, push him to the brink of human mind
- in harmony w/ the universe but it could crush him at any time
