Percy Shelley

Question 1

1792

Answer 1

born to aristocratic family in Sussex

Question 2

1810

Answer 2

expelled from Oxford University after publishing a co-authored pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism

Question 3

1812

Answer 3

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

Question 4

1814

Answer 4

abandons Harriet romantically and moves to France w/ Mary, Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairemont, and Harriet

Question 5

1815

Answer 5

Shelley’s first child w/ Mary passes away 12 days after birth

Question 6

1816

Answer 6

Harriet drowns herself after becoming pregnant w/ another man’s child
- Percy and Mary marry

Question 7

1818

Answer 7

Percy and Mary move to Italy w/ their children Clara and William who died w/n 9 months

Question 8

1819

Answer 8

Son, Percy Florence, born (only child to survive into adulthood)

Question 9

1822

Answer 9

drowns at sea
-30 years old, was a teenage hearthrob for many teens
- a political and sexual radical

Question 10

A Defence of Poetry

Question 11

Poetry expresses the imagination

Answer 11

“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

Question 12

Poetry extends our impression

Answer 12

“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

Question 13

Poetry and creativity necessary for society

Answer 13

“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

Question 14

Poets as prophets

Answer 14

“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

Question 15

Poetry expands the imagination

Answer 15

“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

Question 16

Visionary poets

Answer 16

“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

Question 17

Ode to the West Wind

Question 18

Autumnal change

Answer 18

“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

Question 19

Terza Rima

Answer 19

• 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

Question 20

Surrendering to a larger prophetic force

Answer 20

“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

Question 21

sublime

Answer 21

• 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

Question 22

Mont Blanc

Question 23

Into the ravine

Answer 23

“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