Abstrakt
My presentation looks at Percy Bysshe Shelley’s definition of poetry in his prose essay A Defence of Poetry (1821). Under the tutelage of William Godwin, Shelley’s conception of thought and language is shaped by the empiricism of John Locke and David Hume, and serves to further the shift towards Jeremy Bentham’s theory of language as motive.
To add to these empiricist implications, Shelley labours under the philosophy of Plato and his “indestructible order” that brings forth reality. In this, Shelley’s push for a practical, utilitarian basis of poetry ultimately complicates his position beyond the philosophical rubric of his time.
Leaving no room for an account of language for non-cognitive expressions, he falls back into Platonic models of knowledge when attempting to surmount empiricist epistemology. In this way, Shelley unintentionally suppresses the potency of the creative imagination and the possibility of a metaphoric conception of language in his search for a union between logos and the cycle of figuration.
Though not entirely successful, Shelley’s attempt to recognise the intricate relationship between language and thought, rhetoric and cognition, poetry and philosophy remains noteworthy.