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British Romantic Poetry

Shelley belongs to a period of British poetry known as Romanticism. Other key poets in this period include William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Lord Byron. Admittedly, there’s no neat way to summarize the diversity represented by these poets. However, it is possible to note two broad trends that characterized the Romantic era. For one thing, Romantic writers generally privileged intuition over rationality. They also emphasized the expression of emotion over the communication of didactic messages. Shelley himself encapsulated both these trends in his essay, “A Defence of Poetry” (1840), which pits philosophical reason against the poetic imagination. Whereas reason emphasizes differences, imagination underscores “the similitudes of things.” As such, the poetic imagination is an intuitional form of expression that reveals the underlying unity and beauty of the world, which in turn enables the development of civilization. Far more than the politicians and engineers, then, Shelley claimed that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Such faith in poetry is characteristically Romantic, and Shelley plainly reflects this faith in “Ozymandias.” After all, the only thing to survive the test of time isn’t the monumental statue, but the couplet carved on its pedestal.

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