A Defence Of Poetry
A DEFENSE
OF POETRY
Percy Bysshe
Shelley
Percy Bysshe
Shelley
(1792–1822)
born on August 4,
1792
at Field Place, near Horsham, West
Sussex, England.
one of the major
English Romantic poets regarded by critics as among the finest lyric poets in the English language
classic poems: Ozymandias, Ode to the
West Wind, To a Skylark, Music, When
Soft Voices Die, The Cloud and The
Masque of Anarchy
love of freedom and political opinions influenced poems such as Prometheus
Unbound (1820).
At Eton he was known as" Mad Shelley”.
Shelley himself drowned in a sailing accident in 1822.
A DEFENSE OF POETRY
is an essay written in 1821 and first published in 1840 in Essays, Letters from
Abroad, Translations and Fragments by
Edward Moxon in London.
The essay was written in response to his friend Thomas Love Peacock's article The
Four Ages of Poetry which had been published in 1820.
TWO CATEGORIES OF
"MENTAL ACTION"
1) Reason--"mind contemplating the relations borne by one thought to another.“ Reason analyzes -- taking things apart to determine the relations between diverse parts 2) Imagination -- "mind acting upon those thoughts so as to color them with its own light, and composing from them, as from elements, other thoughts, each containing within itself the principle of its own integrity.“ Imagination synthesizes--bringing together diverse elements to form a unity connecting things previously unconnected.
• Poetry is "the expression of the imagination." • Poets are those people whose
“faculty of approximation to the beautiful . . . exists in excess.”
• "the great instrument of moral good is the imagination."
• This moral effect comes down to love:
“to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own”
TWO CATEGORIES OF PLEASURE:
1) “durable, universal and permanent”
“whatever strengthens and purifies the
OF POETRY
Percy Bysshe
Shelley
Percy Bysshe
Shelley
(1792–1822)
born on August 4,
1792
at Field Place, near Horsham, West
Sussex, England.
one of the major
English Romantic poets regarded by critics as among the finest lyric poets in the English language
classic poems: Ozymandias, Ode to the
West Wind, To a Skylark, Music, When
Soft Voices Die, The Cloud and The
Masque of Anarchy
love of freedom and political opinions influenced poems such as Prometheus
Unbound (1820).
At Eton he was known as" Mad Shelley”.
Shelley himself drowned in a sailing accident in 1822.
A DEFENSE OF POETRY
is an essay written in 1821 and first published in 1840 in Essays, Letters from
Abroad, Translations and Fragments by
Edward Moxon in London.
The essay was written in response to his friend Thomas Love Peacock's article The
Four Ages of Poetry which had been published in 1820.
TWO CATEGORIES OF
"MENTAL ACTION"
1) Reason--"mind contemplating the relations borne by one thought to another.“ Reason analyzes -- taking things apart to determine the relations between diverse parts 2) Imagination -- "mind acting upon those thoughts so as to color them with its own light, and composing from them, as from elements, other thoughts, each containing within itself the principle of its own integrity.“ Imagination synthesizes--bringing together diverse elements to form a unity connecting things previously unconnected.
• Poetry is "the expression of the imagination." • Poets are those people whose
“faculty of approximation to the beautiful . . . exists in excess.”
• "the great instrument of moral good is the imagination."
• This moral effect comes down to love:
“to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own”
TWO CATEGORIES OF PLEASURE:
1) “durable, universal and permanent”
“whatever strengthens and purifies the