Essay on Romanticism and Shelleys Ode to the West Wind

Romanticism and Shelleys Ode to the West Wind M.H. Abrams wrote, The Romantic period was eminently an age obsessed with fact of violent change (Revolution 659). And Percy Shelley is often thought of as the quintessential Romantic poet (Appelbaum x). The Ode to the West Wind expresses perfectly the aims and views of the Romantic period. Shelleys poem expresses the yearning for Genius. In the Romantic era, it was common to associate genius with an attendant spirit or force of nature from which the genius came; the Romantics perceived the artist as a vessel through which the genius flows. For instance, in A Defence of Poetry, Shelley says that poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration, the†¦show more content†¦Be thou me, impetuous one!). A common Romantic notion was the idea that Imagination was the side of the mind that allowed a person to forge a link with someone or something. Another of the central ideas of the Romantic literary figures was the inherent value of the primitive and untrammeled (Revolution 657). Shelley fills the third section of Ode to the West Wind with images of innocence and serenity. Descriptions of azure moss and flowers, sea-blooms, and oozy woods dominate this part of the poem. The fifth section also expresses Shelleys belief that the quest for beauty is important. At the beginning of the fifth section, Shelley conjures the wind to make me thy lyre (Ode 815). The lyre is one of few instruments which existed in the seventeenth century which had taken the same form since ancient Greece. It is a symbol of art and beauty; it is also a frequent symbol for the artist being played by inspiration (Ode 815). What is perhaps most important is that Ode to the West Wind expresses the aspect of the Romantic movement which emphasized the search for individual definitions of morality rather than blindly accepting religious dogmas. As William Blake had his Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which emphasized the belief that traditional ideas of good and evil needed reconsidering, so Shelley believed that inShow MoreRelatedThe Wind As A Powerful Force Of Nature By Percy Bysshe Shelley1502 Words   |  7 PagesThe wind is undoubtedly one of the most powerful forces known to man. It can amount to numerous spectacular, sometimes even terrifying things which man comes to envy. In the Romantic poem Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley, this idea of wind as a powerful force of nature portrays itself as a link to the speaker’s emotions as well as his yearnings. The speaker implores the abilities of the West Wind as a comparison to his poetry, linking the natural world with the world inside of a poet’sRead MoreThe Byronic Hero And Satire1448 Words   |  6 Pageson the idea of negative romanticism, which sought to reject the fixed views of the previous era. 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