Essay
P B Shelley as a Romantic Poet
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P B Shelley's Theory of imagination and Poetic activity in comparison to Coleridge
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Percy Bysshe Shelley"Poetry," says Shelley, "reproduces the common universe" and "purges
from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us
the wonder of our being.... and created anew the universe after it has
been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted
by reiteration. This is similar to Wordsworth’s imagination which seeks
to present the familiar as unfamiliar by removing the veil of
habituation. Shelley divides the mental faculty into two parts: reason
and imagination. Reason implies a kind of logical process that enables
one to connect ideas and/or determine their relationship to one
another - “contemplating the relations borne by one thought to
another''. It is a passive thing similar to Coleridge’s conception of
fancy that is merely associative. Imagination is the process in which
the mind acts upon these thoughts to colour them with its light and
compose from them, as from elements, other thoughts, each containing
within itself the principle of its integrity. It enables creation; it is the
source of artistic desires. Thus Shelley’s imagination is similar to
Coleridge’s secondary imagination which “dissolves, diffuses and
dissipates” perceptions to create poetry. Even though the reason is
inferior to the imagination, it is necessary and instrumental to the
imagination. Reason helps a poet to weigh his thoughts before it is
amalgamated to form poetry. He alludes to Coleridge when he says “like
the alternations of an ever-changing wind over an Aeolian Lyre” our
interactions with the world themselves form poetry.
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