Dec 4, 2008

Adonais | Adonais

At a glance:

Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley
First Published: 1821
Type of Work: Elegy
Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry, Elegy
Subjects: Mythology or myths, Nineteenth century, Poetry or poets, Death or dying, Bereavement or grief, Romanticism, Great Britain, Greece or Greek people, Joy or sorrow

The Poem

Adonais is a long poem, running 495 lines in fifty-five Spenserian stanzas. As the poet states in his subtitle, it is “An Elegy on the Death of John Keats.” The younger Keats, an acquaintance and fellow Romantic poet whom Percy Bysshe Shelley had invited to visit with him in Italy, had been seeking warmer climes to relieve the tuberculosis which eventually took his life, at the age of twenty-six, on February 23, 1821.

The poem’s title requires the reader to pause and reflect momentarily on Shelley’s highly conscious design. In keeping with the...

[The entire page is 2030 words long]

Adonais | Adonais

At a glance:

The Poem

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