If I could see the life of one Romantic poet made into a feature-length film, it would be the life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. It would include, among other things, getting kicked out of Oxford for promoting the importance of atheism, eloping with a 16 year-old (Shelley was only 18 at the time), eloping again with the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft (Mary Shelley, of Frankenstein fame), suffering the loss of several children, travelling Europe with Lord Byron, falling in love with the wife of a friend, and finally dying in a shipwreck. Oh, yeah: he also wrote some of the most beautiful poetry of the 19th century.
By this point you will have already read the assigned poetry from Shelley. I would like to hear your ideas about a few things.
1. Write about "Ozymandias," focusing on the theme of pride, politics, or irony.
For extra brownie points, talk about what might be called "structural irony," or ways that the form and structure of the poem set up ironies.
2. Shelley might have started "Ozymandias" like this: "I am a traveller from an antique land." Why do you think Shelley frames his sonnet like he does, in the voice of someone who heard a story from someone else?
3. "Ode to the West Wind" is written in terza rima. In this form, which uses 3-line stanzas, the terminal word of the middle line becomes the rhyme for the first and third lines in the subsequent stanza. The last stanza is a couplet that takes its rhymes from the terminal word of the middle line in the penultimate (next-to-last) stanza. "Ode to the West Wind" is composed in five terza rima sections. Remembering what we have discussed in class about the relationship between form and content, talk about why you think Shelley may have chosen this form. Is there something about the content that lends itself well to the inter-linking rhymes and short stanzas?
4. In "Ode to the West Wind," Shelley is not merely writing about nature. He is very self-consciously part of nature, both as poet and part of the poetic subject. How is this similar to other works we have read? How is it different?
5. Below are several excerpts from Shelley's A Defence of Poetry, part of which appears in our anthology (867-876). Choose one of them and apply it to Shelley's work AND the work of one other Romantic poet. (Note: This is the kind of question you might expect to find on a short answer mid-term exam.)
A. "Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, “I will compose poetry.” The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our nature are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet."
B. "A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. There is this difference between a story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which have no other connexion than time, place, circumstance, cause, and effect; the other is the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds."
C. "A story of particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful: poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted."
D. "Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar."
Thanks. I will post some Keats-related questions over the weekend, so please begin reading the selections from his work. In the meantime, let's talk about Shelley.
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1. I personally found irony in “Ozymandias”, the epitaph on the sculpture says:
ReplyDelete“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair!”
This once great king erected the statue with mighty words and impressive art to intimidate and point out that the greatness all around the statue was HIS greatness. But time had eroded the statue, and since what had once been a city was now bare but of desert sands, his epitaph now shouted that he was a destroyer. Warning Kings to shake in their boots... because his mighty works were works of devastation and lifelessness.
2. The point of view in “Ozymandias” seems to be the set up for the kind of story/setting that all scary folktales embody. A place too deadly and desolate, that non that see the sights return to tell the tale. YET we hear from someone the lands description and the mysterious details. It follows all good folktales by being a repeated thing, not a recount of an actual adventurer.
3. Terza Rima, to me allows for structure and rhyme, without carrying the heaviness of more predictable rhyming schemes. The ethereal feel that this poem carries talking about nature and wind is perfect for the rhyming of every other line per stanza. Taking the middle term. Word for the next stanza's rhyming creates the soft or light feeling of not having they rhymes feel forced, as when the lines are closer together.
4. "Ode to the West Wind" reminds me most of Wordsworth, because Nature plays such an important roll. But unlike Shelley Wordsworth never speaks for nature. Wordsworth more describes what he sees and feels through nature, letting her remain unknowable. Shelley, by directing Nature gives her purpose and drive, he gives her more personality.
5. "Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar." The art and beauty of poetry is taking situations, feelings and things that we understand and then showing them in a new light, and with new perspective. This creates a feeling that we know the object better than we did before, we appreciate in more, and we have cut deeper into our understanding of our world.
Shelly's poem “To Wordsworth” uses the following ideas/things/feelings in the following unfamiliar ways: Childhood, youth, friendship & love = can disappear like a dream we wake from, Wordsworth's writings = like a lone star shining, star = illuminates darkness in nature (fragile things in nature), Wordsworth's ideals = like a rock-built refuge, multitudes = blind and battling, poverty = honored, words of Wordsworth = woven, Poems = songs, Nature = truth & liberty.
Wordworth's poem “The Tables Turned” uses the following ideas/things/feelings in the following unfamiliar ways: bending over = growing double, sunshine = spreads across fields, songs of birds = wisdom & preaching, Nature = ready wealth, Vernal wood = wiser than sages, Nature's lore = sweetness, our intellect = misshapen things & murder, science = barren leaves, heart = can watch and receive.