Can you explain "A Defence of Poetry" by Percy Bysshe Shelley?

In "A Defence of Poetry" Percy Bysshe Shelley is (1) defining poetry and (2) creating a defending apologetics of sorts for the poets and poetics of the Romantic Age. The poets of the Romantic Age and their poetry broke with poetic tradition on two important points. Firstly, since at least Aristotle's definition of poetics through to Sir Philip Sidney's re-articulation of Aristotelian poetics right up to the Romantics, poetry was believed to be a mimetic inspiration from God and meant to instruct on how to live by divine precepts, instruction that the human heart craved for. As such, poets believed their role was to show how to live, love and be as they were inspired to realizations of mimetic truths by God. Romantics believed that poetry was inspired by the natural order and processed through the poet's imagination, which analyzed the relationships of things, and was a self-expression instead of an expression of a mimesis of a heavenly principle. As a result, they focused on reflecting how people did live instead of instructing in how to live.

Secondly, again since at least Aristotle's time poetry required high subject matter of great importance with highly placed protagonists of great influence and high poetic diction. By contrast, the Romantics embraced subject matter that was commonplace, e.g., Wordsworth's The Ruined Cottage, having common characters and protagonists, with low language of common people (Coleridge rejected the notion that it was even possible to write poetry in common language since all poetic utterances were filtered through the poet's imagination, Biographia Literaria). As a result of these departures from ancient poetic tradition, Romantic poet's had critics who disliked and disapproved of the new turns poetry had taken. It was against these detractors that Shelley was defending the poetry of the Romantics.

Shelley defines poetry as the mind at work through the power of analytical imagination upon thoughts produced by the faculty of synthesizing reason. Reason "enumerates" the "qualities" of the objects of thought while imagination perceives the relationships and value of those objects of thought. Shelly begins with and sums up his essay by concluding that poets are the "prophets" and "legislators" of society by virtue of their role as "authors of language ... institutors of laws ... founders of civil society ... inventors ... [and] teachers."

What are the main points of Shelley's A Defence of Poetry?

Shelley, like Philip Sidney 240 years earlier, produced a long essay enumerating those qualities that make poetry a superior form of writing and the most worthwhile of intellectual pursuits. The principles upon which Shelley bases his arguments conform to the changes in European thought over the recent centuries and show how radically the intellectual atmosphere had altered in the wake of the 18th-century Enlightenment.

Shelley's first point presents a dichotomy between reason and imagination. The first, he says, is based on synthesis, and the second, on analysis. Reason, he says,

is the enumeration of qualities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of those qualities.

The poet, and the artist in general, is thus dealing with, as we would expect, a "higher" meaning of the contents of the outside world, not merely a description of those contents as a scientist would accomplish. Shelley develops this idea of the poetic through tracing the history of poetry's development from Homer forward. He relates the poetic art to the context of the time in which it is created, following it through the conditions of life in antiquity, the death of the ancient religions, the birth of Christianity, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment. It is worthwhile to look into Shelley's personal beliefs about religion and how they relate, directly and perhaps paradoxically, to his views on poetry and its effect on humanity. Shelley identifies a reciprocal process between social progress—including the liberation of women—and the development of poetry. He also regards poets, from Dante, Petrarch, and Chaucer through Shakespeare and Milton, as having done more to liberate mankind from organized religion than philosophers such as Locke, Hume, Voltaire, and Rousseau.

You might ask the question of whether Shelley's essay valuable less for its overall thesis and more for various incidental and radically perceptive remarks throughout it. Two passages are worth pointing out and analyzing. Is his statement valid that Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost is actually a "moral being" and not the representation of evil? And is his final sentence, "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," mere hyperbole? Is it true in any real sense, in Shelley's time or our own?

What are the main points of Shelley's A Defence of Poetry?

The essay presents the figure of the poet in romantic terms as a seer and a genius rather than simply a literary craftsman and an imitator of past classical models. According to Shelley, the poet can communicate universal truths about human existence and contribute to the progress of mankind. Poetry is the medium through which the poet can express his vision. A Defense of Poetry was intended as a polemical reply to Thomas Love Peacock's essay "The Four Ages of Poetry" (1820), where the author argued that poetry was not relevant in an advanced society. Shelley countered that poetry was vital and that poets made a definite contribution to improve society. Because of this, Shelley described poets as "the unacknowledged legislators of the world".

What are the main points of Shelley's A Defence of Poetry?

A premise is a foundational idea upon which an argument is built, and Percy Bysshe Shelley builds his essay "A Defence of Poetry" upon the premise that poetry is good and useful and that poets should be appreciated for their imagination and reason, their ability to see the world in creative ways, and their ability to express their vision in their poetry. Indeed, poetry, Shelley realizes, needs to be defended and its value proclaimed.

Shelley is writing in response to Thomas Love Peacock's "The Four Ages of Poetry," which claims that poetry is useless for modern people and that it should be abandoned in favor of science. Shelley, therefore, begins with the premise that poetry does indeed have a use for modern people and then proceeds to delve deeply into that use. Poetry allows people to access the depths of nature and truth through the beauty and complexity of language.

Further, poets are not wasting their time, Shelley maintains. Rather, they are masters at blending imagination and reason to look at the world in a new way and then express that perspective in their poetry. Poets, Shelley argues, do their part in saving the world from darkness and ruin. He offers a history of poetry and concludes that poetry is in fact useful, for it “lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world” and allows people to see that world more clearly. Its purpose is moral, and it inspires people to truth, beauty, and goodness.

What are the grounds on which Percy Bysshe Shelley defends poetry in "A Defence of Poetry;" how does he differ from Plato in his defence?

Shelley's primary defense of poetry is that it is an impulse native to the "infancy of society." In other words, poetry, as the expression of beauty and truth apprehended, or perceived, by the human is within the very foundation of original language, which, according to Shelley (and borne out by linguists), has grammar and other structures added as subsequent layers:

In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, in a word, the good which exists in the relation.

Shelley defines poetry as a result of inspiration from nature (Aristotle defined the inspiration as coming from God to fill a longing in the human heart) and as a product of imagination. He defines imagination as the antithesis of reason in that imagination--the font of poetry--analyses the "similitude" between objects that reason observes and knows, then creates relationships between these seemingly disparate things. Conversely, reason, the focus of which is the "forms which are common to universal nature and existence itself," "enumerates" and orders that which is "known" and "respects the differences."

Shelley says "Plato was essentially a poet":

the truth and splendour of his imagery, and the melody of his language, are the most intense that it is possible to conceive.

Shelley also says that Plato "rejected the measure of poetry" and "forbore to invent any ... rhythm" of his own because "he sought to kindle a harmony in thoughts divested of shape ...." This accords with what Plato himself said. Plato advocated the superior nature of the ideal and criticized imitative poetic art, whereas Shelley acknowledges the superior imitative, or mimetic, nature of poetry--a mimetic nature defined by Aristotle, Spenser, and Sidney. Plato challenged the rightness of considering mimesis the highest inspired truth and expression of beauty as Aristotle, Spenser, Sidney, and Shelley did.

What reasons does Percy Bysshe Shelley give to defend poetry?

While Plato suggests that poets are irrational and ignorant, Shelley considers poets to be speakers of universal truth and conveyors of the motives of human nature. The large topic of how Shelly defends poetry can only be briefly touched upon in this format, but this will get you started.

Shelley defends poetry by asserting that "poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted." Shelley's point here is that poetry is "the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth." Shelley upholds the mimetic principle espoused by Aristotle and contends that poetry produces analogies to things of life through imagery that participates in mimesis, thus also participates in "the life of truth":

words unveil the permanent analogy of things by images which participate in the life of truth;

Shelly further defends poetry by attributing to poets "almost superhuman wisdom" and likening poets to nightingales who sing in darkness and illuminate human, emotional, psychological "darkness" by the sweet truth and sound of poetry. Shelly states that there is divinity in poetry that works at a depth beyond that of consciousness.

[poetry] acts in a divine and unapprehended manner, beyond and above consciousness

The defence of poetry as the sweet song of truth by a nightingale might have a forced fit with today's poetry, however Shelley has anticipated this in further defence of poetry. He stresses that each poet, though a master of the traditionally prescribed form of poetry, must adapt his poetic song and harmony to his particular versification in his particular era.

What is the main idea of A Defence of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley?

The main idea of A Defence of Poetry is really a simple one. The majority of Shelley's essay lays out arguments in support of the main idea. Shelley asserts that poetry is the herald of beneficial changes in the world because poets, including the celebrated poets of Shelley's age, are the prophets and legislators of the world.

Shelley defines poetry as generated by a force unlike and even opposite to reason. He says reason synthesizes thoughts and "enumerates" their "qualities" while preserving the "differences" of their qualities. Shelley claims imagination, not reason, as the seat of poetry and says imagination analyzes thoughts and perceives the "value" of their qualities while preserving the "similitude of things," the similarity of things. Reason and imagination are thereby shown to have opposite natures and functions. He further defines poetry as music with melody and harmony:

Poetry ... produces not melody alone, but harmony, by an internal adjustment of sounds.

He then goes on to lay a case for understanding poets as the "institutors of law," the "founders of civil society," the "teachers," "prophets," and "legislators" of the world. He suggests that it is these capacities that press poetry and poets into the forefront position of receiving the "wind" of futurity as an "ever-changing wind over an Aeolian lyre" from which vantage point they are:

The most unfailing herald, ... of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution.

Disscuss Percy Bysshe Shelly's essay A Defence of Poetry.

Percy Bysshe Shelley's essay A Defence of Poetry has as it's main tenet the assertion, summed up in the concluding paragraphs, that poets are the force that drives society to higher and better planes; that poetic literature "has ever preceded or accompanied a great and free development of the national will." In accord with this, Shelley defends the poets of his era saying that "the literature of England ... has arisen as it were from a new birth" and that their own poetic age "will be a memorable one." He states:

It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of the present day without being startled with the electric life which burns within their words.

Shelley's essay has two parts. In the first, he defines "poetry in its elements and principles in terms of its connection with a "common source with all other forms of order and beauty." In this framework, Shelley further defines poetry as the mind acting upon the thoughts of reason to color those thoughts with the light of imagination, which is defined as the analysis of the relationship of things:

[Poetry may be considered] as mind acting upon those thoughts so as to color them with its own light, and composing from them ... within the principle of its own integrity.

In the second part, Shelley defends the then "present state of the cultivation of poetry" against those who were attacking the poetry of the Romantic Age as trivial in its self-centered focus on the poet's self-expression and reverence for the common elements of language and life, a self-centeredness also at one point criticized by Coleridge in Biographia Literaria. Shelley also defends his poetic peers idealization of "modern forms of manners and opinions," which led poets away from Aristotelian poetics toward a poetics inspired by nature and the poet's imagination instead of by divine influence. He further defends the poets' efforts to write poetry in accord with the new poetics based on self-expression, a idealization of common forms of life and language and poetic inspiration from the natural plane instead of the divine plane:

[Its] object an application of these principles to the present state of the cultivation of poetry, and a defence of the attempt to idealize the modern forms of manners and opinions, and compel them into a subordination to the imaginative and creative faculty.

Give your ideas on A Defence of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelly.

In A Defence of Poetry Shelley makes a couple of statements that might engender debate. The first is that the Romantic poets, the poets of his present "memorable" age, were the best to come along since the Civil War and Cromwell's Interregnum. Poets of the succeeding Enlightenment Period (also called Neoclassical Period) are represented by names like Dryden, Pope, Samuel Johnson, Burns, Gray and Cowper. Since Shelley limits his observation to the period following the Interregnum, there is much to be said on his side of the argument, although there are those who might hold that Dryden, Pope and even Cowper had power not realized by the Romantics.

The second statement is that poetry is, and has always been, the greatest force behind any call to make a "beneficial change in opinion or institution." Two of the most world-changing events in history, the American Revolution and the French Revolution, were heralded and championed by prose written by such as Voltaire, Locke and Thomas Paine. Perhaps these two instances are exceptions to ancient trends, but based upon these two instances, one might argue against Shelley's contention that poetry is the "most unfailing herald ... awakening ... a great people to work a beneficial change."

The third statement is of interest in the contemporary debate about whether art, which of course includes poetry, merely reflects society or leads society. Shelley says, "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators [law makers] of the world." By this logic, the conclusion has to be that art leads society, governing the direction society will take, which puts the onus of responsibility for the shape of the world squarely upon the shoulders of poets and other artists.