Romanticism and Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Romanticism and Percy Bysshe Shelley

The age of Romanticism covers the period between the French Revolution in 1789 and the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1837. During this period of time there were produced an unexpected richness of writers, artists, and composers throughout Europe such as Goethe, Rousseau, Pushkin, Hugo, Beethoven, Schubert, and many others.

Romanticism has certain characteristics, such as emotion, imagination, introspection, our response to the natural world, and the insight of childhood, that differentiates it from the age of Enlightenment where objectivity and reason were emphasized. Three major preoccupations of Romanticism were nature, dreams, and human conditions. During this period of time there were experimentations with existing narcotics. There were some poets who wrote their best works while affected by drugs. A big emphasis was pointed to the foreign and the savage, the poor and the unlettered people. Poets felt free to express their feelings and emotions and very often they were called prophets or seers because they were able to see things that no one else could see.

In English poetry there were six outstanding figures that were divided between the first and second generations. William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were from the first generation, and Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats from the second. All these writers did not think of themselves as being Romantic poets. However, they all agreed that they were contributing to a period of huge political, social and intellectual change.

Historically, Percy Bysshe Shelley is considered to be one of the most straightforward and drastic poets in the age of Romanticism. Also he is ranked as one of the g...

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... sea. Walking together with a beloved person on a beach either in the evening at the sunset or at night when stars are twinkling or in the morning at the sunrise, what can be more romantic! But these dreams are more common of girls than boys.

To sum up, it looks like the majority of poems written by Percy Bysshe Shelley are coherent with death. In a way they are sad, but also happy, joyful, and of course romantic. It is not a secret that the strength of Shelley's works lies in the power of his imagination. As a poet he used nature, mythology, and emotion in order to express his feelings and thoughts. The contribution to poetry by this writer is immeasurable. I would like to end this essay with the beautiful words written by Shelley:

Life, like a dome of many colored glass,

Stains the white radiance of Eternity,

Until Death tramples it to fragments.

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