Percy Bysshe Shelley: Life, Works, and Legacy, Dispense di Inglese

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Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 - 1822

Childhood and Adolescence

• (^) Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in 1792 in a village just outside of West Sussex. His parents were Timothy Shelley, a squire and member of Parliament, and Elizabeth Pilfold.
• (^) As the oldest of their seven children, Shelley left home at age of 10 to study at a school 10 miles west of central London. After two years, he enrolled at Eton College.
• (^) While there, he was severely bullied, both physical and mentally, by his classmates.

• (^) Shelley and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg

co-authored a pamphlet titled The Necessity

of Atheism. The pamphlet centred upon “the

nature of belief,” a position Shelley derived

from the skeptical philosophies of John Locke

and David Hume.

John Locke (1632 – 1704) David Hume 1711 - 1766

Oxford years

• (^) The Oxford authorities acted swiftly and decisively, expelling both Shelley and Hogg in March 1811.
• (^) The result was a complete break between Shelley and his father, which entailed financial distress for Shelley. (^) Timothy Shelley (Percy’s father)

Harriet and Mary Mary Shelley Although Shelley’s relationship with Harriet remained troubled, the young couple had two children together. Before their second child was born, Shelley abandoned his wife and immediately took up with another young woman, Mary Shelley. Mary was the daughter of William Godwin, an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist, and Mary Wollstonecraft, an English writer, philosopher and a famous feminist William Godwin Mary Wollstonecraft

In Paris

• (^) Shelley and Mary fled to Paris. When they finally returned home, Mary was pregnant. So was Shelley’s wife, Harriet.
• (^) Harriet requested a divorce and sued Shelley for alimony and full custody of their children. Paris (about 1816) Rue de la Paix

Harriet’s Death and Shelley’s Second Marriage

• (^) After their return to England, Shelley and Mary were faced with the disasters of two suicides: Fanny Imlay, Mary’s half sister, and Harriet, Shelley’s wife. Both women had been in love with Shelley. Harriet was found drowned in the Serpentine River in Hyde Park, London. Serpentine River in Hyde Park, London

Shelley and Keats

• (^) In 1817 Percy and Mary moved to Marlow, a

small village in Buckinghamshire. There,

Shelley befriended John Keats and Leigh Hunt,

both talented poets and writers.

John Keats Leigh Hunt

Tragic ending

While in Italy, the couple

lost two children

In 1822 the Shelleys left Pisa in order to rent Casa Magni on the Bay of San Terenzo, near Lerici. Here Shelley and his friend Williams would be able to spend the summer sailing the Don Juan , their new boat, in the Gulf of Spezia. Casa Magni, near Lerici

Death

• (^) On 8 July, sailing back from Livorno to Lerici, a sudden storm overcame the boat.
• (^) Shelley’s and Williams’s bodies were discovered washed ashore on 18 July.
• (^) Italian quarantine laws required that bodies washed ashore be burned, so Shelley was cremated on the beach. The Funeral of Shelley by Louis Édouard Fournier (1889); pictured in the centre are, from left, Trelawny, Hunt and Byron. In fact, Hunt did not observe the cremation, and Byron left early.

Ozymandias (P.B. Shelley)

I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert.... Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

Text analysis

• (^) The poem is a sad meditation on power and memory and a protest against tyranny.
• (^) Ozymandias is the Greek name for the Pharaoh Rameses II of Egypt (13th^ century B.C.) whose huge tomb had the shape of a sphinx.
• (^) The speaker states that he met a traveller who had been to “an antique land” (line 1). The traveller told him that he had seen a vast but ruined statue, where only the legs remained standing. The face was sunk in the sand, frowning and sneering.
• (^) The sculptor interpreted his subject well.

• (^) There was also a pedestal at the statue,

where the traveller read that the statue was

of “Ozymandias, King of Kings.” (line 10)

• (^) Although the inscription in the pedestal

reported the king’s declaration of power and

stated that everyone should look out at the

King’s works and thus despair at his

greatness, the whole area was just covered

with flat sand. All that was left was the

wrecked statue.

Text analysis