ENG 3318 Lecture 16: Percy Bysshe Shelley - first lecture
Document Summary
Politically radical always surrounded by conservatives, but he was not (very left). Belief in rights of women, free love, vegetarian, rights of irish. Expulsion from oxford for the necessity of atheism had he retracted his statement, he could have stayed. Married mary godwin (1816) (2nd wife) also left: very like-minded. Tragedies created rift that never healed: she celebrated his memory by being editor of his work. 857: reason is the enumeration of quantities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of these qualities, both separately and as a whole. Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similarities of things. Reason is to imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance. : reason more like tool. Imagination comes first, reason distillation tool: imagination finds unexpected connections. Poet taps into universal, for all time. You cannot rely on someone in the past creating metaphors for you.