Essays on Percy Bysshe Shelley

Wordsworth said that ‘poetry is passion, it is the history or science of feeling’. In conjunction with Shelley’s quote, this is a bold statement to make. Not only does Wordsworth name poetry as the ‘science’ of emotion –creating an authorial sense of logic –but also...

Working at the height of the Romantic Era, Percy Bysshe Shelley set the standard for literature of the period. Consistently using the conventional comparisons between humans and nature, Shelley in his poetry emphasizes man’s ability to remove himself from the commonplace and initiate change, and...

In his impassioned paean “Ode to the West Wind”, Percy Bysshe Shelley focuses on nature’s power and cyclical processes and, through the conceit of the wind and the social and political revolution prompted by the Peterloo massacre of August 1819, examines the poet’s role therein....

Percy Shelley uses defamiliarization in “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” as a tool to dismantle religious belief systems. Defamiliarization is a literary technique used to make that which is known and familiar appear different and new. Viktor Shklovsky argues that one’s perceptions became habitual, and it...

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;/ Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” (10) demands the pedestal of the statue of the previously named ancient ruler. Out of context a casual passerby of the king’s shattered sculpted likeness might infer that Ozymandias was...

“And he has bought / With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, / His rest and food.” – Percy Shelley’s Alastor In Shelley’s Alastor, the Poet is initially presented as an “early youth” relying upon his “sweet” words to obtain his nourishment. In...

Allegorical literature is employed by many great philosophers to explain the basic tenets of their philosophies. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato used the famous cave allegory to explain how the human mind interprets the ideal material world. The teachings of Jesus Christ in the Bible...

Without a doubt Faiz and Shelley require the all-inclusive community to stay against the abuse and comprehend their vitality. They require the mistreated to rise against the persecution and the abominable mishandle. They influence them to understand that they have an indistinguishable right from the...

Throughout several of his poems, Percy Bysshe Shelley celebrates mutability and takes comfort in the fact that change is inevitable. In “Mutability,” Shelley suggests that constant change is positive because it means that no ill feeling can ever last too long. While one cannot be...

Revolution was a key idea to the philosophy of the Romantic writers, whether it be social, cultural or aesthetic. It is in the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, however, that the most overt revolutionary political statements are made while Frankenstein, the masterpiece novel by his...

Percy Shelley’s sonnet “Ozymandias” (1818) is, in many ways, an outlier in his oeuvre: it is short, adhering to the fourteen line length of most traditional sonnets; its precise language, filled with concrete nouns and active verbs, contrasts against the circuitous, abstract language of “O...

Amongst the ideas presented in the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples, the theme of isolation is prominent. Although Coleridge’s poem departs from Romantic stylistic tendencies, it exemplifies many of the ideas which defined the era, while...

“ The poem Ozymandias by Percy Shelly and My Last Duchess by Robert Browning are very different. However, they do have something in common, both poems represent power. Ozymandias represents power as poem shows that human life is insignificant compared to the passing of time,...

The poems “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelley and “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning are very different. However, they do have something in common – both poems are representations of their power. “Ozymandias” represents power as poem shows that human life is insignificant compared to the...