Q.3. Write an essay on Shelley as a myth-marker. Myth and poetry. By ‘myth’ we usually mean a purely fictitious narrative involving supernatural persons etc. and embodying popular ideas on natural phenomena or such other things. The origin of myths lies in the ancient days when people, unable to form abstract conceptions, described the phenomena of nature …
16. Mysticism. Shelley believed in soul of the Universe, a Spirit in which all things live and move and have their being. His most passionate desire was for the mystical fusion of his own personality with this Spirit.
17. Pantheism. “Shelley,” says Stopford A. Brooke, “was not an atheist or a materialist. If he may be said to have occupied any theoretical position, it was that of an Ideal Pantheist. Wordsworth, a plain Christian at home, wrote about Nature as a pantheist. The artist loves to conceive of the universe, not as dead but as alive. Into that …
18. Shelley’s Style and Diction. Shelley’s poetry varies considerably in style. He was a more accomplished ‘man of letters’ than the other romantic poets; he could vary his manner successfully to suit the tone of his work, as in The Cenci, his stage play, or in familiar or humorous poems such as Julian and Maddalo and Peter Bell the Third. His style …
15. Shelley’s conception and treatment of Nature. Like all Romantic poets Shelley had a new attitude towards Nature. Shelley’s reading of Nature was transcendental, which to some readers may be vague and misty. But vague it assuredly is not, since Shelley’s philosophy of Nature is perfectly clear and consistent, and in his finest lyrics, such as The Cloud and The …
19. Shelley’s Position in English Poetry. Shelley does not belong to the same rank as Shakespeare or Milton. He has neither Shakespeare’s sweeping vision and intimate knowledge of human nature and his genial and sunshiny humour, nor Milton’s puissant and splendid imagination, workmanship and grand style. Like Shakespeare he has never explored the recesses of the human heart or the motive-springs of human will or sounded the …
14. Romantic element. Romantic element is very strong in Shelley’s poetry. Among the Romantic poets Shelley held a distinctive place. His poetry is permeated by the very spirit of Romanticism. His poetic style and his imagery are essentially romantic. He was the idealist of the revolutionary moment. While Byron represented merely the destructive side of the revolution …
13. Melancholic strain. Shelley was profoundly melancholy. His poems are permeated by “the still sad music of humanity.” This melancholic strain is present everywhere in Shelley’s poetry. He says in To a Skylark. Our sincerest laughterWith some pain is fraught;Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddestthoughtAgain he says:Most wretched souls—Are cradled into poetry by wrongThey learn in suffering what …
12. Vagueness and unreality. Shelley’s poetry has been much criticized and much condemned by Matthew Arnold and others, because of its vagueness, what Arnold called its “fatal lack of substantiality.” He described Shelley as a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.” Beautiful he certainly is, but is he ineffectual? Because …
11. 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 …