San Antonio College Library

Percy Bysshe Shelley was an extraordinary poet, playwright and essayist, revolutionary in ideas, artistic theory and practice. This looks at Shelley's life and includes details on the basics of his poetry, prose and drama, his view of philosophy and his role in emerging views about ecology.

Shelley's detractors since Hazlitt have noticed a division in the 'self' of his poems. A central reasoning core fears the passions surrounding it and distrusts the language expressing it. A few of his admirers offer an alternative view of the poems as symbolical pointers to a non-linguistic reality transcending passion. Most miss the point, justifying their admiration by referring to the poems' systems of thought. This reading of Shelley's major poems...