Things to Consider:

• Relationship to other Poets (esp. Wordsworth)
• Theory of Poetry and Views of the Poet
• Political vs. Philosophical Views

Part One (See Parts Two  Three and Four  )

• How does this piece compare with Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads?

• What, according to Shelley, is the difference between  imagination and reason (you may wish to compare Coleridge's discussion of the imagination and the fancy in Biographia Literaria, esp. pg. 634).

• Explain the image of the Aeolian lyre.

• Explain:  "A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one" (870).  (See also Coleridge's conception of "the infinite I AM" (634)).
• Explain:  "Language is arbitrarily produced by the imagination, and has relation to thoughts alone" (870).
• Explain:  "A Poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sound" (870).

• Explain: Poetry "awakes and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought" (871).

• Explain the image of the fading coal.

• Explain:  "Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds" (873). (See also 874).

• Explain:  "All things exist as they are perceived:  at least in relation to the percipient" (874).

• Explain:  Poets "are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present" (876).
• Explain:  "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world" (876).

• Why was Shelley expelled from Oxford?

• What is "fagging"?
• Why did Fanny Imlay commit suicide in October 1816?

• Why was Mary Shelley "moody" in the spring of 1822?

• In what ways, according to the editors, are Shelley's argument and images "conflicting" and "contradictory"?

• Explain:  "The savage is to ages what the child is to years" (868).  How does this compare to Wordsworth's discussion of "low and rustic life" (409)?
• Explain:  "Men, even in the infancy of society,  observe a certain order in their words and actions distinct from that of the objects and the impressions represented by them, all expressions being subject to the laws of that from which it proceeds" (868).

• How, according to Shelley, is the language of poets metaphorical?
• Explain: "Language itself is poetry" (869).
• How, according to  Shelley, is a poet both a legislator and a prophet?

• Explain:  "The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause" (871).

• Explain:  "We want the poetry of life" (872).
• Explain:  "Poetry "is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought" (872).

• Explain:  "Poetry turns all things to loveliness" (874).

• What, according to Shelley, is the difference between  poetry and logic?
• How does Shelley's description of the poet here compare with Wordsworth's on page 414?

• How do the sentiments found in this poem (and in Shelley's "To Wordsworth") compare with those in Byron's Dedication to Don Juan, stanzas 10 and 11?
• What is the main point of this poem?

• What is a fen?

• Explain the description of wealth in lines 4-6.
• What would Milton's return accomplish, according to WW?

PBS, "To Wordsworth" (1816)
816-17:

• How does this poem compare to WW's "London 1802"?
• Why might Shelley have made connections to that poem?
• What is Shelley's main point?

• What exactly was the Peterloo Massacre?

• Explain the leech imagery in lines 4-6.
• What book is "sealed" (11)?
• Explain lines 13-14.

• In what ways is this a revolutionary poem? In what ways is it not?

• Explain the irony in lines 34-37.
• Why do the multitude adore anarchy (41)?

• Explain the imagery in lines 118-25.

• Explain the lion imagery in 151-55.

• What is slavery (160-96)?

• What is freedom (213-65)?

• Explain lines 230-33.
• Explain lines 250-53.

• Describe Shelley's final call to "action" (295-351).

• What is the significance of the West Wind?
• What is the significance of the colors of the leaves blown by the wind (4)?
• What is the significance of the reference to Siva and Vishnu?
• In what ways are clouds like leaves (15-23)?

• How are waves like clouds and leaves (35-40)?
• Explain lines 53-54.
• Does PBS really identify himself with Jesus, as the footnote suggests? Explain.

• What is the significance of the sky-lark being unseen (20)?

• Explain lines 31-35.
• How does the discussion in lines 36-40 compare to Shelley's discussion of the poet in his "Defence" (870)?
• Explain the comparisons to the poet (36-40), maiden (41-45), glow-worm (46-50), and rose (51-55).

• Explain "Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought" (90). Compare with "Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds" ("Defence of  Poetry" 873).
• Explain lines 101-105.