You are here: UK Essays » Custom Essays » Imagination Shelley Poetry

Free Essays - Essays

Imagination Shelley Poetry

The Unity of Reason and Imagination in Shelley’s ‘A Defence of Poetry’

‘A Defence of Poetry’ was originally conceived as an answer to Thomas Love- Peacock’s partly mocking article ‘The Four Ages of Poetry’; it was intended to appear in the subsequent issue of the ‘Literary Miscellany’. Peacock presents a historical survey of poetry and argues that it has become redundant in an age in which reason is ascendant over the imagination.

‘A Defence of Poetry’ should be interpreted in light of its aims to refute Peacock’s arguments, and also in acknowledgment that the present text comprises the first movement in an argument which Shelley intended to have three parts. It is important that the first part – which considers poetry in its ‘elements and principles’- was written so it could be applied to the greater consideration of poetry in its ‘present state’ and contend Peacock’s view of the ‘degraded state’ of contemporaneous poetry (Shelley 507, Peacock).

Shelley defines poetry; the relationship between reason and the imagination is the salient consideration in this part of the argument. The importance of this distinction is most apparent when applied to the subsequent discussion in which, Shelley - like Peacock - surveys the historical development of poetry and considers its effect on society. Ultimately, Shelley’s argument culminates in a refutation of Peacock’s principal claims concerning the value of poetry.

Shelley’s distinction between reason and imagination is important to his ‘Defence of Poetry’ in the context’ of the Enlightenment, since empirical enquiry was challenging other epistemologies. Peacock argues that the purpose of imagination and feeling is so that ‘the severity of reason is warmed and rendered palatable’ (Peacock). He sees this as most applicable in the ‘sciences of morals and of mind’ but argues that ‘as reason gains the ascendancy in them over imagination and feeling, poetry can no longer accompany them in their progress’ (Four Ages of Poetry).

Ultimately Peacock argues that imagination and poetry are rendered redundant, arguing that poetry ‘can never make a philosopher, nor a statesman, nor in any class of life a useful or rational man’ and that only reason is necessary in the ‘advance towards perfection’ (Peacock). Shelley counters Peacock’s argument not by refuting the primacy of reason but arguing that imagination is necessary to its interpretation: he argues that ‘reason’ is the ‘principle of synthesis’ as opposed to imagination which is the ‘principle of analysis’ (Power 480). Shelley maintains an empirical foundation for knowledge, stating that reason interprets ‘universal nature and existence itself’. He argues that imagination ‘regards the relations of things, simply as relations’ and thus are like ‘algebraical representations which conduct to certain general results’ (480).

Seemingly, Shelley’s contrast of reason and the imagination creates an opposition between the two terms. However, as Fry argues ‘reason has no useful function that is independent of, or different from, the function of the imagination’ (Fry 130). In Shelley’s argument, both reason and imagination are integral to a scientific and rational interpretation of the world. Shelley defers the meaning of reason to that of the imagination almost negating the difference between the two terms. Fry convincingly argues that Shelley’s concept of the imagination seems ‘roughly the same as the description by Peacock of the rational philosophic mind’ (130).

Tim Milnes explains that: ‘The problem is that poetry must challenge empirical “knowledge” while at the same time straining to assert in its own epistemic credibility’ (11). Shelley conceives the purpose of the ‘creative faculty to imagine that which we know’ but also sees it as ‘the basis of all knowledge’ (502, 503). Despite his argument that the ‘creative faculty’ forms the basis of all knowledge, Shelley makes no epistemic challenge to the primacy of empirical knowledge since he has already established the link between imagination and reason. Shelley’s achievement is not to challenge empirical knowledge in ‘A Defence of Poetry’, but rather to portray poetry -which ‘may be defined to be “the expression of the imagination”- as part of an empirical epistemology (480).

Shelley enlarges the opposition between reason and imagination into a greater comparison of the ‘calculating’ and ‘creative’ faculties (502). As with the contrast of reason and imagination, he establishes an opposition between the creative and calculating only to emphasise the dependency of the two terms upon each other. It is significant that Shelley links imagination, and poetry with science; he argues that without poetry ‘The human mind could never’…‘have been awakened to invention of the grosser sciences’ (502).

Shelley’s describes the seeming opposition between imagination and analytical reasoning and considers how the ‘application of analytical reasoning to the aberrations of society’ has ‘attempted to exalt over the direct expression of the inventive and creative faculty itself.’ He portrays any attempt to claim the supremacy of ‘analytical reasoning’ over the ‘creative faculty’ as paradoxical having previously described the two as synonymous. Mawer argues that ‘paradox is central to Shelley’s poetic vision’, and involves the unity of reason and imagination. This is most evident in Shelley’s use of language.

Paradoxically, Shelley describes the oppositions between science and poetry in the scientific terms of a formula: ‘The cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of the internal world; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave’ (503). Shelley’s poetic words have the quality of analysis, and thus reinforce his link between ‘imagination’, ‘analysis’ and ‘reason’ (480).

Shelley’s language can be likened to the ‘algebraical representations’ which he used as an analogy for imaginative thoughts in his opening paragraph; this scientific language is most evident in his use of the words ‘proportionally circumscribed’ indicating that he purports to some kind of quantifiable relationship between poetry and science (503). The prose compares with the quasi- scientific opening lines of the ‘Defence of Poetry’ and thus he linguistically links the two elements of the argument. Furthermore, the use of the phrase ‘empire’ and the imagery of enslavement emphasises the arbitrary nature of science (503). Thus, Shelley’s language emphasises the arbitrary nature oppositions between science and poetry.

Shelley uses a change in language and imagery to signify his shift in argument from a concern with poetry’s associations with science to its relationship with the divine. He considers ‘the poetical faculty’ and states that its second function is to ‘reproduce and arrange them according to a certain rhythm and order called the beautiful and the good’ (503). Shelley’s two functions of poetry seem almost contradictory. The first element, to create new ‘materials of knowledge’ is inextricably linked with reason, whereas the ‘beautiful and the good’ is linked with the divine.

Shelley’s language vacillates between the scientific and theistic as he considers the opposing qualities of poetry. He states that ‘Poetry is indeed something divine’, and he expands on this argument using biblical language. This religious language is in juxtaposition to a sentence which has the qualities of a scientific formula: ‘The cultivation of poetry is never more desired than at periods when, an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of nature’ (Powers 503).

Shelley’s sentence is conditional, and renders poetry dependant on the excess of the calculating principle. This contrasts with the subsequent use of biblical language: poetry ‘is the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought: it is that from which all springs, and that which adorns all; and that which if blighted denies fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of life’ (Powers 503).

Shelley alludes to the archetypal ‘tree of life’ which invokes the bible and a theistic view of life, in opposition to a view based on reason (Powers 503). The tree unites the dual qualities of Shelley’s ‘poetical faculty’: two seemingly opposite elements of poetry are united as ‘the root and blossom of all other systems of thought’ (Powers 503). Shelley’s imagery presents unity between different ‘systems of thought’ in poetry, or to attempts to unite that which is ostensibly epistemologically opposed (Powers 503).

The idea of unity and ‘the divine’ in Shelley’s ‘A Defence of Poetry’ is a source of considerable critical controversy. Shelley describes the Notopoulos, in his study of The Platonism of Shelley argues that ‘Poetry has for Shelley the same function as Eros in the Symposium: it is an intermediary daemon between man and the divine’ since ‘it strips the world of the veil of unreality and enables us to see Ideal Beauty.’ (347) However, . Wassermann ‘the central assumption of Shelley’s poetics is, of course, the transcendent Absolute’ ‘unifying modes of mental perfection’ (205).

‘Shelley attempted intermittently to transform the Platonic doctrine into the more manageable idea of intuition’ (206). ‘the essence of the poetic conception is that it is whole not by virtue of some a priori formula on whose validity it must depend or of some transcendent form which it imitates’ ‘consistent within itself’ (208)

The idea of unity for Fry ‘unity can only be approximated’ (125). ‘Part of what determines us …is this poet’s prexisting langauge’ (128). ‘to this poem alone Shelley’s concept of unity may be applied’ (127).

Hogle ‘Shelley’s writing announces the desire fro ultimate unions between signifiers and between signifiers and ultimate signifieds, without submitting or urging submissions to the idea of an attainable or singular Absolute Signified’ (72).

Shelley’s definition of poetry and its relationship to language is at once ambivalent and ambiguous in ‘A Defence of Poetry’. He defines poetry in ‘a general sense’ as “the expression of the imagination”, and includes the liberal arts in this definition. Poetry in a more ‘restricted sense’ to Shelley is thus the imagination expressed in the ‘arrangements of language’ (Powers, 481, 483).

Shelley claims that language is ‘a more direct representation of the actions and passions of our internal being’ than other forms of representation since language has ‘relation to thoughts alone; but all other materials , instruments and conditions of art, have relations among each other, which limit and interpose between conception and expression’ (Powers, 483).

Shelley momentarily disregards the relationship sounds have with each other in language, perhaps since this would challenge the privileged status which he assigns to the poetic medium. Furthermore, he continues to argue that language is arbitrary and not natural in its origins: ‘language is arbitrarily produced by the imagination and has relation to thoughts alone’ (Powers, 483).

Thus, Shelley having argued that language bears direct relation only to the ‘imperial faculty’ who creates them, continues to state that therefore poetry ‘is curtained by the invisible nature of man’ rather than by language. (Powers, 483) However, in the later parts of a ‘Defence of Poetry’, Shelley describes how language ‘spreads its own figured curtain’ thus implying that its function is one of veiling as opposed to unveiling. (Powers, 505)

Keach has given much critical attention to the imagery of the veil and mirror in Shelley’s ‘Defence of Poetry’. He argues that ‘the possibility that the arbitrariness of language can be imperious and despotic lurks within the terms of Shelley’s celebration’ (17).

Ultimately, ‘an underlying linguistic scepticism that runs throughout Defence like a counterplot.’ (Fry 22)

Works Cited

Fry, Paul H. The Reach of Criticism: Method and Perception in Literary Theory. New Haven: Yale UP, 1983.

Hogle, Jerrold E. ed. ‘Shelley and the Conditions of Meaning’ in Evaluating Shelley. Ed. Clark, Timothy, Hogle, Jerrold E. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1996: 48-73.

Keach, William. Shelley's Style. New York and London: Methuen, 1984.

Mawer, Noel Dorman: ‘Shelley, Metaphor, and the Romantic Quest for Unity’ Prose Studies. 7:3 (1984): 209-224.

Milnes, Tim.‘Centre and Circumference: Shelley's Defence of Philosophy’ European Romantic Review. (15:1) (2004) 3-22.

Notopoulos, James A. The Platonism of Shelley: A Study of Platonism and the Poetic Mind. Durham, North Carolina: Duke UP, 1949.

Peacock, Thomas-Love. ‘The Four Ages of Poetry’ ()

Powers, Sharon B. and Reiman, Donald H ed. Shelley's Poetry and Prose, New York and London: Norton, 1977.

Wasserman, Earl R. Shelley: A Critical Reading. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971.

All of the essays in the free essays section were written by students and then submitted to us to display and help others. Thanks to all the students who have submitted their essays to us. You should not hand in our essays as your own. We do not condone plagiarism! If you need custom essay help, then have a look at our essay writing services.

Sign up and be the first to receive our latest offers: