A DEFENCE OF POETRY – SHELLEY

A DEFENCE OF POETRY – SHELLEY

·         Shelley wrote A Defence of Poetry in response to his friend Thomas Love Peacock who wrote a satirical piece entitled The Four Ages of Poetry.

·         Defence was written in 1821 and published by Mary in the year 1840.

·         It was published after 18 years of Shelley’s death.

·         Peacock’s essay “The Four Ages of Poetry” appeared in 1820 and was published by Ollier’s Miscellany.

·         It presents a cyclical theory of history of poetry.

·         Peacock divides the poetry into four ages:

·         The first was the age of iron, this age produced rude heroes.

·         The next age was gold. It covers the period from Homer to Sophocles.

·         Then came the age of silver. In this age the production of heroic poetry, social comedy and satire were unparalleled. Virgil and Horace were prominent during the period.

·         The fourth age was age of Brass represented by Nonnus.

·         Peacock calls the medieval roman as the iron age.

·         The golden age was that of Shakespeare.

·         The ages of Dryden & Pope constitute the age of silver.

·         Peacock describes the contemporary period (the age of Shelley and the other romantic poets) as the age of silver.

·         Peacock is of the opinion that poetry will decline as science advances.

·         “Even a slight ray of historical truth is sufficient to bring decline poetry”.

·         Peacock says that the poet is “a waster of his own time, and a robber of that of others”.

·         Defence of Poetry gets its source from Plato and Sydney’s Apologie for Poetrie.

·         Shelley establishes a distinction between reason and imagination.

·         Peacock’s view that reason is bound to triumph ultimately, causing the decline of imagination.

·         Shelley says that reason is the body and Imagination is the soul.

·         Reason is the shadow and imagination is the substance.

·         Reason without imagination is ineffective.

·         Poetry is the expression of imagination.

·         Poetry cannot be translated only the meaning of poetry can be translated not the interrelation of sounds.

·         He says poetry expresses much action so he calls Plato & Bacon are poets.

·         Poetry can transform even the ugly into the beautiful.

·         He says “The poet sugar-coats the bitter pill”.

·         Poetry is often charged as “immoral”. Shelley says that this charge is baseless because even the best ethical doctrine have failed to reform people.

·         The drama is fit to be called the mirror of the age.

·         The decline of the arts in Greece, poetry flourished in Egypt and Sicily.

·         Dante’s poetry can be regarded as a bridge between the ancient and modern world.

·         Shelley says, “Homer  was the first epic poet. Dante was the second great epic poet”.

·         Poetry is like God.

·         Poetry redeems from decay the visitation of the divinity in man.

·         Poetry reveals which is good, true and beautiful.

·         Shelley says, “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”.

·         Shelley shows the relationship between sound and poetry.

·         He states “sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each other and towards that which they represent, and a perception of the order of those relations has always been found connected with a perception of the order of the relations of thought”.

·         He also shows the distinction of poets and prose writers. He considered Plato and Cicero as poets, which again strikes a bad cord, to use a sound analogy, with me.

·         He also references Plutarch, and Titus Livy, two Roman historians, as being poets.

·         For Shelley to consider these men as simply poets is denying the immense impact these men had on political and historical analysis.

·         Again he takes his ideas too far and should stick to defending poetry and not making obscure references to men greater in knowledge than he.

·         He states poetry brings divine in the mind. That poetry invokes us a sense of happiness that is innate and unique in us all.

·         Shelley examines the creative faculty of Greece.

·         He believes that these men were products of their society.

·         The Romans considered the Greeks as the standard to be measured and although they would attempt to stay away from Greek influence it would forever remain in Roman art and architecture.

·         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.

·         He concludes in his defence, he considered poetry to be everywhere. That music, documenting of history, painting, and architecture are all apart of poetry.

·         “A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why”.

·         Poetry creates New Earth, adds beauty to the deformed, immortalizes the best and the most beautiful.

·         Poets are the author of Highest wisdom and pleasure.

·         Poet is the best, happiest, wisest and most illustrious of men.

·         The poets are the Hierophants of unapprehended inspiration.