PERCY BYSSHE

SHELLEY
 BIOGRAPHY

• Lived 1792-1822
• Eldest child in his family and in line to inherit a
considerable estate and a seat in Parliament
• Had one younger brother and four sisters
• Family was very religious.

• In 1804 he began attending Eton College

• In 1810 he published Zastrozzi
• He later went to Oxford and was expelled in 1811
 VALUES OF PERCY SHELLEY

• He had many unorthodox views and

ideas for his time
• He was an activist for: atheism, free love
and vegetarianism.
• He often would have his works printed in
limited quantities to avoid the backlash of
the general public.
 ZASTROZZI
Verezzi attempted to rush through the open door, but Bernardo opposed himself to it. A long
and violent contest ensued, and Bernardo's superior strength was on the point of overcoming
Verezzi, when the latter, by a dexterous blow, precipitated him down the steep and narrow
staircase.
Not waiting to see the event of his victory, he rushed through the opposite door, and meeting
with no opposition, ran swiftly across the heath.
The moon, in tranquil majesty, hung high in air, and showed the immense extent of the plain
before him. He continued rapidly advancing, and the cottage was soon out of sight. He thought
that he heard 's voice in every gale. Turning round, he thought Zastrozzi's eye glanced
 THE NECESSITY OF ATHEISM

• Goal of the text:

• As a love of truth is the only motive which actuates the Author of this little tract, he earnestly
entreats that those of his readers who may discover any deficiency in his reasoning, or may
be in possession of proofs which his mind could never obtain, would offer them, together with
their objections to the Public, as briefly, as methodically, as plainly as he has taken the liberty
of doing

• Excerpts:
• the mind cannot believe in the existence of a God
• There Is No God. This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The
hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains unshaken
 QUEEN MAB
• Stanza 1:
How wonderful is Death,
Death and his brother Sleep!
One, pale as yonder waning moon
With lips of lurid blue;
The other, rosy as the morn
When throned on ocean's wave
It blushes o'er the world:
Yet both so passing wonderful!
• Stanza 5
Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen!
Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air;
Their filmy pennons at her word they furl,
And stop obedient to the reins of light:
These the Queen of spells drew in,
She spread a charm around the spot,
And leaning graceful from the etherial car,
Long did she gaze, and silently,
Upon the slumbering maid.
 LAON AND CYTHNA

• Published in 1818
• Also known as Revolt of Islam
• The Revolution of the Golden City: a
Vision of the Nineteenth Century

• 12 cantos
• Centers around Laon and Cythna who
begin a revolution against tyrannical ruler
of Argolis.
 LAON AND CYNTHA

Stanza 3
• Stanza 16
Hark! 'tis the rushing of a wind that sweeps
There was a Woman, beautiful as morning,
Earth and the ocean. See! the lightnings yawn
Sitting beneath the rocks, upon the sand
Deluging Heaven with fire, and the lashed deeps
Of the waste sea — fair as one flower adorning
Glitter and boil beneath: it rages on,
An icy wilderness — each delicate hand
One mighty stream, whirlwind and waves upthrown,
Lay crossed upon her bosom, and the band
Lightning, and hail, and darkness eddying by.
Of her dark hair had fall'n, and so she sate
There is a pause — the sea-birds, that were gone
Looking upon the waves; on the bare strand
Into their caves to shriek, come forth, to spy
Upon the sea-mark a small boat did wait,
What calm has fall'n on earth, what light is in the sky.
Fair as herself, like Love by Hope left desolate.
 SHELLEY’S TAKE

• The Poem was produced by a series of thoughts which filled my mind with unbounded
and sustained enthusiasm. I felt the precariousness of my life, and I engaged in this
task, resolved to leave some record of myself. Much of what the volume contains was
written with the same feeling, as real, though not so prophetic, as the communications of
a dying man. I never presumed indeed to consider it anything approaching to faultless;
but when I consider contemporary productions of the same apparent pretensions, I own I
was filled with confidence. I felt that it was in many respects a genuine picture of my own
mind. I felt that the sentiments were true, not assumed. And in this have I long believed
that my power consists; in sympathy and that part of the imagination which relates to
sentiment and contemplation
 MONT BLANC

• A tribute to Coleridge, Wordsworth,and

Byron.
• All discuss the awesome effect of the
Alps

• His relationship with nature is riddled with

skepticism
• The only meaning that can be drawn from
nature is from one’s imagination
 MONT BLANC
Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:—the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights,
And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams dart through them. Winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret Strength of things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of Heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?
 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

• Written in 1818-1819
• Considered to be Percy’s masterpiece
• Prometheus is the ideal hero for Shelley
• He is rebellious for the good of the people
• He is a forethinker or prophet

• 4 Act lyrical drama.

• Preface:
• the imagery which I have employed will
be found ... to have been drawn from the
operations of the human mind
 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

Prometheus
Disdain! Ah no! I pity thee. What ruin
Will hunt thee undefended through wide Heaven!
How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror,
Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief,

Not exultation, for I hate no more,

As then ere misery made me wise. The curse
Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains,
Whose many-voicèd Echoes, through the mist

Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell!

Lines 53-64
 DEFENCE OF POETRY

• Written in 1820
• Was written in a response to The Four Ages of Poetry
• Which critiqued as being in a decline and at its lowest point in history.

• Shelley defines poetry as any art form that bring goodness and beauty into the world.
• He argues that poetry forwards the moral goodness and science discovery.
 DEFENCE OF POETRY

• Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be “the expression of the imagination”:

and poetry is connate with the origin of man. Man is an instrument over which a series of
external and internal impressions are driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing
wind over an Æolian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-changing melody. But
there is a principle within the human being, and perhaps within all sentient beings, which
acts otherwise than in the lyre, and produces not melody alone, but harmony, by an
internal adjustment of the sounds or motions thus excited to the impressions which
excite them. It is as if the lyre could accommodate its chords to the motions of that which
strikes them, in a determined proportion of sound; even as the musician can
accommodate his voice to the sound of the lyre.
 OZYMANDIAS

• Published in 1818
• One of his most famous short poems.
• Sonnet
• Central theme is contrasting the
inevitable decline of all leaders and
empires with the lasting power of art.
 LEGACY

• Percy Shelley drowned untimely in 1822 • Most famous works:

when he was only 29 on the coast of Italy. • Zastrozzi (1810)
St. Irvyne (1811)
• He was reluctant to publish many of his The Necessity of Atheism (1811)
poems, because he feared harsh An Address, to the Irish People (1812)
Queen Mab (1813)
criticism. Alastor (1814)
• Difficult to know exactly how many poems The Revolt of Islam (1818)
Ozymandias (1818)
he wrote. The Masque of Anarchy (1819)
• There are 300+ poems Men of England (1819)
Rosalind and Helen (1819)
• 10+ essays Prometheus Unbound (1820)
Adonais (1821)
Epipsychidion (1821)
Hellas: A Lyrical Drama (1822)
Thank You For
Watching

-Mereuta Mircea
-Staicu Victor