Through a careful interpretation of A Defense of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Democratic Vistas by Walt Whitman, one can gain a holistic sense of poetry, what it is and what it does, that can be applied to literary texts of all times. One...

Allegorical literature is employed by many great philosophers to explain the basic tenets of their philosophies. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato used the famous cave allegory to explain how the human mind interprets the ideal material world....

In his impassioned paean "Ode to the West Wind", Percy Bysshe Shelley focuses on nature's power and cyclical processes and, through the conceit of the wind and the social and political revolution prompted by the Peterloo massacre of August 1819,...

“And he has bought / With his sweet voice and eyes,

from savage men, / His rest and food.”

- Percy Shelley’s Alastor

In Shelley’s Alastor, the Poet is initially presented as an “early youth” relying upon his “sweet” words to obtain his nourishment....

Percy Shelley’s sonnet “Ozymandias” (1818) is, in many ways, an outlier in his oeuvre: it is short, adhering to the fourteen line length of most traditional sonnets; its precise language, filled with concrete nouns and active verbs, contrasts...

Working at the height of the Romantic Era, Percy Bysshe Shelley set the standard for literature of the period. Consistently using the conventional comparisons between humans and nature, Shelley in his poetry emphasizes man’s ability to remove...

Much of the literary work that sprung out of the Romantic period centered around images of nature and the strong emotions that these evoked; the works of John Keats and of Percy Bysshe Shelley are no exception. Both written in 1819 and published...

The Romantic period was a time of exceptional change, emphasising the power of imagination as a window to transcendent experience and spiritual health. Lasting from the late 18th to early 19th century, the transitory period of Romanticism...

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;/ Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” (10) demands the pedestal of the statue of the previously named ancient ruler. Out of context a casual passerby of the king’s shattered sculpted likeness might...

Revolution was a key idea to the philosophy of the Romantic writers, whether it be social, cultural or aesthetic. It is in the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, however, that the most overt revolutionary political statements are made while ...

Wordsworth said that ‘poetry is passion, it is the history or science of feeling’. In conjunction with Shelley’s quote, this is a bold statement to make. Not only does Wordsworth name poetry as the ‘science’ of emotion –creating an authorial sense...

Percy Shelley uses defamiliarization in “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” as a tool to dismantle religious belief systems. Defamiliarization is a literary technique used to make that which is known and familiar appear different and new. Viktor...

Throughout several of his poems, Percy Bysshe Shelley celebrates mutability and takes comfort in the fact that change is inevitable. In “Mutability,” Shelley suggests that constant change is positive because it means that no ill feeling can ever...

Aesthetic critics and writers of the 18th century wrestled with a number of questions regarding beauty, nature, mimesis, art, and the sublime and how they all related to one another. One of these queries concerned mind and matter – that is,...

Emily Dickinson's 'A Bird came Down the Walk' and Percy Bysshe Shelley's 'To a Skylark' both utilise the bird as a symbol of nature, with Dickinson's poem being a violent and abrupt view of the natural world, and Shelley's poem being more...

Kamikaze, written by Beatrice Garland, is focused around the Japanese soldiers who self-sacrificed their lives during WW2, whilst flying missile planes into enemy ships. This act was perceived to be one of great bravery and honor, reflecting a...

Contextual literature representative of the surrounding world is reflective of the challenges to traditional social and political stances, each showcasing an ideological progression towards transformed societal thought and unified perceptions....

Both poems describe a ruined statue of ‘Ozymandias’ in the middle of an Egyptian desert. They both explore the decay of a once ‘great’ man, once a ‘king of kings’. Also, the poems touch on what a wonderful power used to exist and what that has...

Poets of the Romantic era placed great importance on emotions and feelings of the individual, turning inwards to consider the power of the imagination and the freedom it provides. In fundamentally changing the focus of their poetry, Romantics...

Poets of the Romantic era placed great importance on individualism and indulging in your emotions, rejecting the Enlightenment era’s attempt to explain the world through logic. This is first seen in ‘Fare Thee Well’, where Lord Byron focuses on...

For poets writing in the Romantic Era, their work appeared to be a response against the Enlightenment movement which valued logic and reason and rejected emotional and subconscious appeals that the Romantics found to be more favorable. Through the...

A meditative poem, “Mont Blanc” begins with Shelley inspecting the mountain and the sublime attained by such power. The unique perspective weaves environmentalism and romanticism and concludes the sublime’s impact and the power of nature. Through...

For poets writing in the Romantic Era, their work appeared to be a response against the Enlightenment movement which valued logic and reason and rejected emotional and subconscious appeals that the Romantics found to be more favorable. Through the...

Amongst the ideas presented in the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples, the theme of isolation is prominent. Although Coleridge’s poem departs from Romantic stylistic tendencies, it exemplifies many...