A Defence of Poetry

“Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be ‘the expression of the imagination’: and poetry is connate with the origin of man.”

Shelley defines poetry broadly. He defines his terms so readers can understand what he means when he uses the word “poetry.” He gives this definition first so he can later contrast it with his narrower definition. He also refers here to the thesis of his piece, which is that poetry is directly related to the human experience, so it can never be gotten rid of.

“But poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible order, are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting; they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true, that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world which is called religion.”

Shelley speaks to the heart of his piece in saying that poets are more than just writers; they are creators of civilization. He appeals to emotion and asks readers to think about poets in a new way. This quote anticipates the work’s most famous quote, which casts poets as “the unacknowledged legislators of the world” (54).

“Language, colour, form, and religious and civil habits of action, are all the instruments and materials of poetry; they may be called poetry by that figure of speech which considers the effect as a synonyme of the cause. But poetry in a more restricted sense expresses those arrangements of language, and especially metrical language, which are created by that imperial faculty, whose throne is curtained within the invisible nature of man. And this springs from the nature itself of language, which is a more direct representation of the actions and passions of our internal being, and is susceptible of more various and delicate combinations, than colour, form, or motion, and is more plastic and obedient to the control of that faculty of which it is the creation. For language is arbitrarily produced by the imagination, and has relation to thoughts alone.”

Shelley gives his narrow, specific definition of poetry. Earlier, he broadened his definition to include all works of imagination, but here he says that traditional poetry primarily involves language. He contrasts it with his earlier definition of poetry as all works of the imagination.