Varied imagery. Shelley deals less with actualities than does any other English poet. His imagery is that of a dream—world, peopled by ethereal forms. The world of spirits was more real to him than our world of hard facts. “So habitual and familiar, says Raleigh, “was Shelley’s converse with this spectral world that both in his thought and in his …
Extraordinary Musical Gift. No poet has succeeded so perfectly in welding music and thought– of synchronizing, as it were the vibration of rhythm and emotion. “He changes the rhythm, not only from stanza to stanza and line to line, but from word to word, with every slightest variation of feeling.” “Shelley has the gift of lending …
Love of Freedom, Love and Beauty. Freedom is the breath of Shelley’s works—freedom not only from the tyranny of earthly powers, but from the tyranny of religion, expressing itself in republicanism, in pseudo atheism, and in complete emancipation from the current moral code both in conduct and in writing. Liberty, equality, and fraternity were ideals which presented …
Shelley as a Prophet. Shelley has his place, says Prof. Elton, apart and secure among the English prophets, in the great line from King Alfred to Carlyle. “He has a clear and sublime vision of the hops of mankind. He wishes to see the world freed from all the enslavements of the brain, and from the sloth that …
Shelley’s Lyricism. Shelley’s genius was essentially lyrical, and he reigns supreme in the vast domain of lyricism. The lyrical mood predominates in all his works. His moods, impressions, thoughts and emotions embodied themselves naturally in verse. In lyric, as E.W. Edmunds remarks, Shelley is among the greatest poets of the world because of the purity at once of his melody …
Shelley’s Marvellous Poetic Genius. Here Prof. Cazamian’s view have been summarized. Shelley’s poetic genius was marvellous, though his span of life was very short, and it was cut off at twenty-nine. Shelley’s poetry is suffused with a creative beauty of a purely poetical quality which has appeared in no other English poet with the exception of Spenser, and to a lesser degree, Keats. Its …
Shelley’s Idealism in His Poetry: Shelley was a magnificent idealist. “Shelley,” says Elton, “is more constantly a poet of the idealizing type than any other except possibly Spenser. If Byron is a great interpreter of revolutionary iconoclasm, Shelley on the contrary, is a great revolutionary idealist, and a poetic prophet of faith and hope in a …
Platonism in Shelly: The views here are based mainly on L. Winstanley essay on ‘Platonism in Shelley. Shelley was by nature one of the most studious of all English poets; from his Oxford days onwards Greek was his favourite reading and for Plato he had natural affinity of mind. The ideas which Shelley borrows from Plato may be …
O. W. Campbell has elaborated Shelley’s concept of human life in contrast with Plato the renowned Greek philosopher. His Dialogues and his Republic are among the greatest works of the ancients and embody a philosophical system which has served for admiration and discussion in all succeeding ages. According to 0. W. Campbell, from his earliest youth Shelley was ambitious to …
Here we are giving the views of Prof. Clutton-Brock and Prof. Elton. Shelley’s poetry is the expression of the man himself, springing from the heart rather than from the brain, and we must understand the man to understand his poetry. “In his poetry,” remarks Clutton Brock “his character interests us as much as the poetry itself, because he has, so …