Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Quest for (Poetic) Revolution via Nature and Free Love

How’s your poetry reading so far?

1. Which poems do you like the best?2. How do you overcome the

difficulties of reading poetry? 3. Do you like the Romantic poets?

Do you find them too passionate? Can you relate to their passionate quest for poetry, love, nature and revolution?

Quest: a long search for something that is difficult to find, or an attempt to achieve something difficult (Cambridge)

Outline• Introduction: Shelley—His Life and Idealism• To a Skylark (1820) (compared with « Nightingale » Ode)

• Quiz• Ode to the West Wind (1819) (next week: compared

with « To Autumn» Ode)

• Short Lyrics (to be compared)– “To —— [Music, when soft voices die]” (1821)– “When the Lamp is Shattered (1821)”

• Next Week

Film Clips: How the Romantics are connected

• Six Degrees of Percy Bysshe Shelley• Byron (BBC) Part 8 (4:41 « What makes you write? ») Part 9

(8:55 Shelley’s death)

• The Romantics (part)–– “The Necessity of Atheism” – (Coleridge – Kubla Khan)

– 16:00 Shelley –: “A God made by man…”– Free love –Harriet 21:00 elopement with Mary

and Claire – 24:00 Byron – Childe Harold Pilgrimage; 34:00 Keats

– 53:28 – Shelley, seeing his own double, his death

Shelley’s Free Love

Mary Shelley

Jane Williams

Harriet Shelley: Wife of the Poet

Shelley’s desertion of Harriet Westbrook – whose infedility?

Shelley: Bio• 1811 – [age 19] eloped married Harriet

Westbrook (age 16). • 1814 - abandoned his pregnant wife and

child to run away with Mary Godwin.• 1816 – met Byron in Italy• 1816 - married Mary, following the

suicide of Harriet Westbrook. • 1822 – drowned in a sudden storm while

sailing back from Livorno to Lerici..

He was unrecognised in his lifetime, earning around £40 for his writing over the duration of his entire life.

Byron divorced his wife and left

England for good.

Shelley’s Idealism• Atheism: Expelled from Oxford for producing

a pamphlet called, “The Necessity of Atheism”

• Works promoting his ideals: – “Poetical Essay on the Existing State of

Things” (1811), a long, strident anti-monarchical and anti-war poem.

– several essays on Vegetarianism , writing that eating meat is “subversive to the peace of human society.”

-- admired by C.S Lewis, Karl Marx, Gandhi (for his non-violence in protest and political action).

To a Skylark: Summary

• 21 stanzas divided into 3 parts: – 1-6: 1) strain of unmeditated art compared to different

things; – 7-12: 2) «What thou art we know not »--further

comparison. – 13-18: 3) teach us your thoughts and origins of your

music, though we can only sing sad songs.– 19-21: 4) teach me half your gladness.

• What is the poem’s main idea? • To what is the skylark and its music compared?

To a Skylark: Discussion Questions

• What is the poem’s main idea? • To what is the skylark and its music

compared? How can a bird be compared to so many things? Can you find something close to it?

• How is the ways Shelley relate to skylark different from or similar to Wordsworth or Coleridge or Byron?

To a Skylark: Note – the first 4 lines are metered in trochaic trimeter,

the fifth in iambic hexameter (Alexandrine). The rhyme scheme: ABABB

– Compared with « Ode to Nightgale »– Nightingale—of dark night; skylark—bright sky.– The nightingale inspires Keats to feel “a drowsy

numbness” of happiness that is also like pain, and that makes him think of death; the skylark inspires Shelley to feel a frantic, rapturous joy that has no part of pain. (source: Spark Notes)

Ode to the West Wind: Discussion Questions

– Terza rima (tercets in iambic pentameter with an interlaced rhyme scheme--aba, bcb, cdc) ending with a concluding couplet (intensified climax)

– 5 parts divided into two parts: invocation to the wind and a plead to the wind.

• What is the poem’s main idea? • To what does the speaker compare the

west wind and its influences?• What does the speaker plead for the

wind to do?

Microsoft Word 97 - 2003 ¤å¥ó

The poem marked &

paraphrased

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Short Lyrics

« WHEN THE LAMP IS SHATTERED »« MUSIC, WHEN SOFT VOICES DIE »

How are they different from each other in their views of the love represented and lover’s responses?

« WHEN THE LAMP IS SHATTERED »• Pay attention to images of space (cell, nest,

home) and its progressive emptiness.• Do you have experience of the

following lines?• When the lips have spoken,

Loved accents are soon forgot.• The heart's echoes render

No song when the spirit is mute - No song but sad dirges,Like the wind through a ruined cell,Or the mournful surgesThat ring the dead seaman's knell.

When the Lamp is Shattered

When the lamp is shatteredThe light in the dust lies dead - When the cloud is scattered,The rainbow's glory is shed.When the lute is broken,Sweet tones are remembered not;When the lips have spoken,Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendourSurvive not the lamp and the lute,The heart's echoes renderNo song when the spirit is mute - No song but sad dirges,Like the wind through a ruined cell,Or the mournful surgesThat ring the dead seaman's knell.

When hearts have once mingled,Love first leaves the well-built nest;The weak one is singledTo endure what it once possessed.O Love! who bewailestThe frailty of all things here,Why choose you the frailestFor your cradle, your home, and your bier?

Its passions will rock thee,As the storms rock the ravens on high;Bright reason will mock thee,Like the sun from a wintry sky.From thy nest every rafterWill rot, and thine eagle homeLeave thee naked to laughter,When leaves fall and cold winds come.

Love?

Love?