The Defense Of Poetry By PB Shelley
The Defense of Poetry
-P. B. Shelley
Ø P. B. Shelley, a great Romantic poet and
critic, defends poetry by claiming that the poet creates human values and
imagines the forms that shape the social and
cultural order.
Ø Unlike to Peacock, for Shelley, each poetic
mind, recreates its own private universe and poets, thus are the
unacknowledged legislators of the world.
Ø For Shelley, Poetry is the vehicle to reach
to the ideal world or platonic world.
Ø He argues that all forms of arts and science
depend up on nature but poetry improves the nature and creates better than
it.
Ø Here, his views share similarities
with Aristotle, who said that a poet is not only an imitator but also a
creator.
Ø Reason and imagination are the two faculties
of mind.
Reason breaks the things in to parts and analyses it. Thus the reason is the principle of analysis.
Ø On the other hand, imagination synthesizes
the components.
Ø Since imagination is the principle of
synthesis that can false contradictory forces.
Ø Imagination has soothing power that pacifies
the mind and the people become moral.
Ø It creates the best mind and the happiest
moment so, peaceful mind is required to produce the poetry.
Ø For Shelley the best mind and the happiest
moment, produced by imagination are the ways to get the essence but
Coleridge’s imagination does not soothe the mind, instead it is just a
creative force.
Ø Shelley believes that poetry strengthens the
moral faculty and gives pleasure so he treats imagination both as creative
and pragmatic aspects.
Ø The poet is a moral teacher who gives idea
and pleasure to the society by teaching indirectly.
Ø Poet is a prophet and legislator who create
social norms rules and moral lessons with the help of poetry.
Ø A poet to him is not only the author of
language of music of the dance, and of architecture but is also the
legislator of laws the founder of civil society.
Ø Thus, poetry, unlike to Peacock has
its social and moral functions along with its aesthetic pleasure.
Ø In this way, Shelley defends poetry from the
charges made by Peacock, for whom poets are no more than semi- barbarians do.
Ø Shelley opposes peacocks idea that romantic
use of language brings cultural decadence and reinforces that poetry creates
novelty where we can see the seed of revolution.
|
Comments
Post a Comment