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Elective English—III

Notes At the age of 19, Shelley ran away with Harriet Westbrook, the 16-year-old daughter of a tavern
keeper and married her regardless of his loathing for the tavern. This incident created a scandal
and Shelley’s father never forgave him for his elopement with a young girl. Now looking for a
vacation Shelley moved to Ireland to campaign for political reforms and his poem Queen Mab
published in 1813. He also wrote a political pamphlet A Declaration of Rights, on the French
Revolution, which was thought to be extremely radical for circulation in Britain. Shelley came
back to England where he became engaged in radical politics. The following year he met his
ideal, William Godwin and fell in love with his daughter Mary, an idealist and a radical like
himself. She also had a writer’s streak and went on to write Frankenstein and The Last Man, two
of the most popular and influential novels in English literature. In July 1816, Mary and Percy
along with Mary’s half-sister Jain Clairmont went to Switzerland.

Did u know? P B Shelley did not make enough money from his writings during his lifetime.
His primary income came from the money his grandfather left for him.
The Shelleys went there to meet Lord Byron, one of the most famous and controversial poets of
the period. Shelley and Byron became friends and formed a circle of English expatriates in Pisa,
travelling throughout Italy. It was the time when Shelley composed most of his best lyric
poetry, including the Ode to the West Wind (1819), Ode to a Skylark (1820) and Prometheus Unbound
(1820). On July 8, 1822, Shelley was drowned at sea during a fierce storm while sailing from
Leghorn to La Spezia, Italy; he was not even 30 years old.
Percy Bysshe Shelley belongs to the younger generation of English Romantic poets, the generation
that came to eminence while Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth were settling
into middle age. The older generation of Romantics had a reverence and simple ideals for nature
whereas the Romantics of the younger generation including Lord Byron and John Keats also
came to be known for their sensuous aestheticism, their explorations of deep-passions and their
political radicalism.
The younger generation of Romantics also died quite young, Shelley died when he was 29, Keats
at the age of 26 and Byron when he was 36. To an extent, the greatness of feeling stressed by
Romanticism indicated that Romanticism was always linked with youth, and because Keats,
Shelley and Byron died young. However, they had attained iconic status as the representative
tragic Romantic artists but they never had the chance to sink into conservatism and complacency
like Wordsworth did. Shelley’s life and his poetry surely support such an understanding, but it
is significant not to get involved in stereotypes to the extent that they confuse a poet’s individual
character. Shelley’s delight, his nobility, his optimism and belief in humanity are special and
distinctive among the Romantics. His expression of these feelings makes him one of the early
19th century’s most noteworthy writers in English.

Did u know? Shelley and John Keats were close friends so when Keats died of tuberculosis
at the age of 26 Shelley dedicated the poem Adonais to him.

4.2 Themes, Motifs and Symbols

4.2.1 Themes

The Heroic, Visionary Role of the Poet

In Shelley’s poetry, the character of the poet (as well as the character of Shelley himself) is not
only a brilliant entertainer or even an observant moralist but also a grand, unfortunate, visionary

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