Muoz, Henrquez 1

Katherine Muoz, Claudia Henrquez

Professor Francisca Folch
Literary Theory LET1343
28 April 2014
Prcis on Shelleys A Defense of Poetry
The author wrote this text as a response to Peacocks essay The Four Ages of
Poetry, in which Peacock states that poets should use their life in sciences instead of
poetry to improve the world. By explaining what is for him a poet, a poem and their
effects upon society, Shelley, discusses the importance of poetry in our world.
At first, he deals with the classes of mental actions: reason and imagination.
Reasons concern is the relation between thoughts or analysis and imagination
synthesizes, or connects those thoughts to build around them something different. These
two concepts complement each other to form a unity, as Shelley explains in Reason is
to the imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow
to the substance (516).
After discussing those two ideas, he refers to poetry by defying it as the
expression of the imagination and that is connate to the origin of man (516). He uses
the metaphor of the Aeolian lyre to reflects this by saying that man is the lyre in which
the external and internal impressions interacts, as the wind, moving the chords and
producing melodies but also the man accommodate its chords to produce more than just
melody but harmony. Poetry gives new life to old things, makes beautiful that which is
distorted (519), makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world (527)
and is the reflection of the most precious moments of the best minds. As poetry
synthesize, it creates new worlds, so is it superior of sciences, which seeks the
understanding of the world without creating anything new. As poetry is in the nature of
Muoz, Henrquez 2

man, every human has the faculty of being a poet, but he also states that within the poets
the sense of beautiful and truth exist in excess because they apprehend the truth and
beautiful (517). For Shelley, poets are really important because they seek the truth and
beauty and everything that is morally good, to teach people how to behave in the world
and he expresses that by saying that poets are legislators.
Another key point in Shelleys text is the distinction between two kinds of
pleasure: one durable, universal and permanent; the other transitory and particular
(525) the former is the most important for him because it strengthens and purifies the
affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense (525), even if the cause of
that pleasure is pain.
Shelleys beliefs on poetry gave the poet a principal role in society because poets
are the seekers of truth and true beauty in contrast to Plato, who states that poets are
ignorant of the truth because they imitates something that is far from the world of ideas
or the truth. But Shelley took Platos idea of that poetry is a product of inspiration and
assigned to the poet a divine role by saying that they are legislators and the teachers of
how things should be done in our world. The author said that poetry is just one possible
product of poetry, because for him, poetry was everywhere, from music to architecture,
in politics, etc. So for him, the faculty of the imagination and making of the poet is the
important part. Shelley also includes the view of Burke about sublimity when saying
that the most important pleasure is found in pain, but his pain is more related to
emotions than danger, to the lost love kind of pain more than the one driven by the
knowledge or fear of being in danger.