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Percy Bysshe Shelley(4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822)

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P.B.Shelley• Shelley is by far the most talented and at the

same time most controversial of all the Romantics.

• In his short life of 29 and a half years, he created some literary jewels which time has not been able to stale.

• Shelley was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, a Whig M.P.

• His mother, Elizabeth Pilford was a landowner from Sussex.

• He was born on 4th August,1792 at Field Place,Broadbridge Heath, near Horsham, West Sussex, England.

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P.B.Shelley• Legend has it that Shelley attended only one lecture

while at Oxford where he got admittance on 10th April, 1810 .

• He authored a pamphlet entitled ‘The Necessity of Atheism’ in the spring of 1811. This got him rusticated from the University. Atheism was an outrageous idea in religiously conservative nineteenth-century England.

• His early school–days were not at all happy because he was a regular victim of torture and humiliation by the senior students of Eton College.

• Shelley’s helpless cry amidst the torturous old boys brought him the nickname ‘Mad Shelley’.

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P.B.Shelley• However, he was not a typical good boy. Instead, he was

very mischievous and used to play pranks with the students and teachers by using scientific materials.

• Once he blew up a tree in Eton Campus with gun-powder.• Shelley belongs to the younger generation of English

Romantic poets.• At the age of 19,he fell in love with Godwin’s daughter

Mary Wollstonecraft, whom he could never able to marry because of his first marriage with a tavern girl, and who is now remembered primarily as the author of Frankenstein.

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P.B.Shelley• In 1822, Shelley drowned while sailing in a

storm off the Italian coast.• Shelley died when he was twenty-nine, Byron

when he was thirty-six, and Keats when he was only twenty-six years old.

• The early deaths of these Romantics have given them iconic status as they did never reach the stage of conservatism and complacency .

• Shelley’s joy, his magnanimity, his faith in humanity, and his optimism are unique among the Romantics.

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P.B.Shelley

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P.B.Shelley

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P. B. Shelley William Godwin had a

tremendous influence on Shelley. Godwin’s ‘Political Justice’ and his philosophy of utilitarianism shaped Shelley’s political outlook and also the Radical Humanism in him.

William Godwin

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P. B. Shelley

• The central thematic concerns of Shelley’s poetry are largely the same themes that defined Romanticism: beauty, the passions, nature, political liberty, creativity, and the sanctity of the imagination.

• But Shelley’s treatment of these themes received uniqueness because of his philosophical relationship to his subject matters.

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P. B. Shelley

• Shelley’s main works comprise of Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Music, When Soft Voices Die, The Cloud, and The Mask of Anarchy. His other major works include long, visionary poems such as Queen Mob, Alastor, The Revolt of Islam, Adonais, The unfinished work The Triumph of Life; and the visionary verse drama The Cencis(1819) and Prometheus Unbound(1820).

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P. B. Shelley • Shelly was a constant dilemma to the publishing

concerns. His writings were always centres of controversy and dispute. But all the time Shelley laughed the last laugh. So they dare not to deny him flatly.

• However, most publishers and journals declined to publish his work for fear of being arrested themselves for blasphemy or sedition.

• To coup up, Shelley adopted at least three pen names.

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P. B. Shelley

• Shelley became an idol of the next three or four generations of poets, including important Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets.

• Modern writers like T.S.Eliot, W.B.Yeats, Ezra Pound and even Bernard Shaw were influenced by Shelley.

• The Universities are flooded with re-critques of Shelley even in 2014.

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Percy Bysshe Shelley

Special Note: Slide 13 to 22 contains audible Video programmes. These slides are required to be downloaded.-i.s

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Ozymandias by P.B.Shelley

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P.B.Shelley

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Ode to the West Wind-P.B.Shelley

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Ode to the West Wind-P.B.Shelley

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To a Skylark—P.B.Shelley

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‘The Indian Serenade’ –P.B.Shelley

The Indian Serenade Percy Bysshe Shelley

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‘Hymn to Intellectual beauty’ by

P.B.Shelley

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‘The Cloud’ by Shelley

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The Cloud-P.B.Shelley

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Percy Bysshe Shelley This PPT is prepared on P.B.Shelley’s much anthologized poems collecting U.Tube Videos.

byIndranil SarkarSapatgram:: Assam::IndiaContact: 09859945270Links:-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaR2vOGs6rUwww.youtube.com/watch?v=jgr4ytlqN9www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrupJ5q2laIwww.youtube.com/watch?v=u8yBB1kOSeUhttp://youtu.be/YLtXPzxejxYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NggvG-_cmiQhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAYk2HX1AWkwww.sparknotes.com

NB. Works of Raja Sharma and Maya Angelou’s ‘Pearls of Wisdom’ are chosen. The video slides require double click to open.