Grounds on which shelley defends poetry

The poet serves society by best expressing these qualities in ever new ways towards the advancement of society.

Like Sidney, Shelley expands the category of poetry to a more general notion in order to privilege its role in society. Both of these moves define poetry against other disciplines and yet appear to encompass disciplines as though poetry were a first principle of knowledge on which all the other disciplines rest.

Shelley appeals to these benefits when he takes up an attack that Sidney also refutes: the perceived immorality of poetry. While in Sidney, poetry eases humans into gaining knowledge and acting more virtuous, in Shelley, poetry exercises the imagination, which he views as the key to empathy and, thus, moral action. But Shelley directs the aim of poetry toward the future in a way that highlights the use of moral examples in another way.

The poet thus engages in prophecy by endowing his poems with universal models, phrases, images, ideas etc. Just like Shelley, Sidney sees the particularities of poetry as stand-ins for universal examples.

Unlike Sidney, however, Shelley makes his argument in dead earnestness without a hint of satire. Further, when Shelley likens the shaping of universal materials in poetry to a form of prophecy, he suggests that he imagines his own audience as one in the future. One suggestion of this is that he withheld publication of his defense until it was published posthumously, presumably because he felt that his own time would not accept his sense of morality. What originated in Sidney as a partial jest was refashioned in the Romantic era in earnest, less for present consumption, but more for a belief in the future as perpetual striding towards progress.

Peacock, Thomas Love. Edited by Raymond M. Scribner, Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Edited by H. Houghton Mifflin, Title, year, and collection of painting from Morris, Lawrence, ed Greenwood Press.

Volume 3, p. View all posts by Frank. I like how at first this felt like a facebook level debate between two of the more famous historical mind, yet turned into a thought provoker. Like Like. Shelley makes enough references to him to suggest he was reading his Apology while writing his defense.

Your guess about contemporary poets is as good as mine, but I think in a lot of ways the way the Romantics thought about poetry resonates with the way we think about it today, esp. If they were not products of their culture they would not have had the creative faculty which they possessed.

Writers and poets that would precede the Greeks would attempt to copy and duplicate their writing style. The Romans considered the Greeks as the standard to be measured and although they would attempt to stray away from Greek influence it would forever remain in Roman art and architecture.

Shelley is again drawing the distinction between poetry and the divine. In the works of Dante and Milton there consists a bridge between the past and the present. In this section Shelley diverges from making his defense of poetry to an analysis of poetry on society. Shelley places poets on a pedestal higher than any other being. Poetry to him is something divine that records the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds Fordham.

Again he believes poets to be the best and the brightest in society above all others morally, intellectually, and of a higher divine nature. Closing Arguments He concludes his article by acknowledging poets as the unacknowledged legislators of the world. In his defense he considered poetry to be everywhere.

That music, documenting of history, painting, and architecture are all apart of poetry. Where he does go a little too far in arguing the totality of poetry he does make a very convincing argument for poetries essential influence in society. Bowdoin College. Accessed 4 Nov. No information provided on date posted.

Any quote cited was taken directly from this page and are not my own. Shelley, a great Romantic poet and critic, defends poetry by claiming that the poet creates human values and imagines the forms that shape the social and cultural order Unlike to Peacock, for Shelley, each poetic mind, recreates its own private universe and poets, thus are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

For Shelley, Poetry is the vehicle to reach to the ideal world or platonic world. He argues that all forms of arts and science depend up on nature but poetry improves the nature and creates better than it.

Here, his views share similarities with Aristotle, who said that a poet is not only an imitator but also a creator. Here, his views share similarities with Aristotle, who said that a poet is not only an imitator but also a creator. Reason and imagination are the two faculties of mind.

Reason breaks the things in to parts and analyses it. Thus the reason is the principle of analysis. On the other hand, imagination synthesizes the components. Since imagination is the principle of synthesis that can false contradictory forces. Imagination has soothing power that pacifies the mind and the people become moral.