Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. What do you understand by this sentence? How are these ideas cashed out in Hymn to Intellectual Beauty and Ode to the West Wind?

Authors Avatar

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” What do you understand by this sentence? How are these ideas cashed out in Hymn to Intellectual Beauty and Ode to the West Wind?

The Defence of Poetry by Percy Shelley is a written commentary as a response primarily to the literary critical piece The Four Ages of Poetry by Thomas Love Peacock who wrote in his essay the following in regard to modern poetry:

“But in whatever degree poetry is cultivated, it must necessarily be to the neglect of some branch of useful study: and it is a lamentable spectacle to see minds, capable of better things, running to seed in the specious indolence of these empty aimless mockeries of intellectual exertion. Poetry was the mental rattle that awakened the intellect in the infancy of civil society: but for the maturity of mind to make a serious business of the play-things of its childhood, is as absurd as for a full-grown man to rub his gums with coral, and cry to be charmed to sleep by the jingle of silver bells.”

Shelley’s Defence is inspired by the above passage and is literally defending poetry from the offensive Peacock is laying upon it. He emphasises, however, throughout the work that he is not just responding to the conjecture of Peacock that poetry has become merely a decorative spectacle in an otherwise enlightened society but that this particular piece has a higher cause. It evolves from merely a polemic reply to a fervent justification of not only the beauty and worth of poetry in society but how it is the driving force behind the shaping of civilisation. He argues that poetry makes you see the world anew and it is not only the decorative part of society, but the very cause of knowledge. He also goes on to talk of poets and their roles as both the prophets and the legislators of mankind and how they can both predict and allow the future, he argues that they are the virtuous and wise, a controversial statement for the time.

Join now!

The points made in Defence can be segregated into two sections: firstly, the value Poetry as an entity has upon the world at a very base level and secondly, the attributes of poets as people and the responsibility they carry in society. Both of these aspects come across very strongly in both Ode to the West Wind and Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. Firstly though, the idea of Poetry’s role in society and its attributes to modern knowledge as viewed by Shelley must be explored. In Defence he says:

“Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of ...

This is a preview of the whole essay