Discuss Shelly's Views on the Figure of the Poet "the Infinate and the One"

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Percy Bysshe Shelley is considered by many to be among the greatest and most influential writers in the British Romantic movement, possessing the radical and nonconformist beliefs that would influence his own and many others works. Hazlitt said that Shelley was " clogged by no dull system of realities, no earth-bound feelings" revealing the visionary within this great writer. When presented with the statement "A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and number are not", one could observe it literally. The distinct influences that a poet and his works have upon literature, time and place etc, and the way in which time and place influence the poetry. The eternal, the infinite and the one, are all powerful words, whether associated with the poet or the poetry are integral to this statement and therefore should also be considered. With regards to the themes "time and place", Shelley himself states that his views on time are that it " destroys the beauty and the use of the story of particular facts, stripped of the poetry which should invest them", time and its effect on the poet and his works are unpredictable, as time continues and the civilization in which the poetry is observed evolves, therefore the way in which the poetry is perceived and the reaction it evokes will also change. Language, religious and civil habits alter through time, and they are " all the instruments and the materials of poetry", therefore time will change the way in which the poetry and therefore the poet are observed. When examining the effect of time and the consequential effect on the poetry, one could question the poet's influence through the use of such "instruments." ... ... middle of paper ... ... a poet, both for literal and metaphorical value. He says that they "feel not what they inspire, the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." With this belief, he was able to use the figure of a poet to present his beliefs and ideals to those who would listen, and to those who would not. Poetry, he believed is the material record for inspiration, "creates anew the universe after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration." It was this revolutionary streak which enabled Shelley to reveal how, through the figure of a poet and all that he resembles he was able to portray the way in which a poet can use the process of poetry to perceive time, nature, civilization and literature, which eternally reveals, transforms and influences human thought and conceptions.

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