Shelley, Percy Bysshe - Domande

1. What about the role of the poet. The role of the poet is to be a recorder and a legislator of the world.

2. The relationship with religion. He proclaimed himself an atheist, but he contradicted himself by believing in the eternal spirit of the Universe.

3. What is poetry for Shelley? Shelley saw poetry as something divine. It is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. Its function is to make immortal what is best and beautiful in the world. Moreover poetry is the expression of imagination.

4. What is the difference between the normal men and the poets for Shelley? All men possess imagination, but this faculty is preeminent in the poets. The poet is a simply man whose faculties are exceptionally great. He is not only the inventor of arts, but the law-giver and the founder of civil society. He is also a prophet.

5. What about Shelly’s platonism? Shelly’s Platonism is linked to his pantheism: for him Nature is the expression of a pervading spirit of good; natural objects and human life are bad copies of a remote ideal. The duty of artists and poets is to strip off the worldly clothing and expose the ideal prototype.

6. What is the difference between reason and imagination? Reason is the faculty of analysis and calculation; imagination is the faculty of syntesis and wholeness. The imagination reaches the universal and infinite and produces a vision of beauty and truth.

7. What is the difference between Wordsworth’s and Shelley’s idea of Nature? Wordsworth describes nature as a real world. Instead, Shelly considered Nature as a beautiful veil that hides the eternal truth of the Divine Spirit.