In an essay from the Southwest Review, Jennifer Wagner reflects upon Shelley’s empowerment of the reader, rather than the speaker, by his breaking from the sonnet form. Shelley’s resistance to yielding to poetic form served as a model for how he thought not merely suffrage, but a reformation of existing societal forms, should occur gradually and peacefully. He explicitly claims in his “A Defence of Poetry” that poets are “the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society and the inventors of the arts of life” (858), which denotes Shelley’s insistence upon the fact that the only way an adequate reform could occur is if expression occurs. Shelley claims there is an “inevitable connection between national prosperity and freedom, and the cultivation of imagination and the cultivation of scientific truth, and the profound development of moral and metaphysical enquiry” (87), and suggests that poets and philosophers embody those inherent skills necessary to inspire a unified attempt at reform. It is upon the shoulders of poets that the responsibility for energizing the masses sits. We can attribute this obsession with allowing everyone to feel worthwhile to his ideology that the key to successful reform is the expression of the desire for, and necessity of, reform he wants everyone to have agency, and what better way to enforce both that notion and a reformation than by enacting a reformation via agency? He believes, “If the majority are enlightened, united, impelled by a uniform enthusiasm and animated by a distinct and powerful appreciation of their object, and feel confidence in their undoubted power-the struggle is merely nominal” (79). His predominant complaint against the social order is the miserable state in which the masses exist. He claims, “The strongest argument, perhaps, for the necessity of Reform, is the inoperative and unconscious abjectness to which the purposes of a considerable mass of people are reduced,” and asserts that “The advocates of Reform” must inspire others to also question the existing forms ( A Philosophical View of Reform 82-3). We can see Shelley’s insistence upon the belief that expression, and thus agency, is the ultimate means by which reform can occur. He makes a nearly identical argument in his “Defence of Poetry,” asserting, “The most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is Poetry” (868). He emphasizes the importance of the role of poets in the process of reform, and encourages their participation in reformation movements ( A Philosophical View of Reform 29). Shelley insists that the role of the poet is one of holding the responsibility to share intellect and innovation. Combining elements of both the Shakespearean and the Petrarchan sonnet traditions, Shelley models for his readers how one must examine preexisting forms and proposes personal agency as an alternative to traditional notions of power. ![]() ![]() His popular sonnet “Ozymandias” is largely recognized as a rumination on the role of art however, when juxtaposed with his “A Defence of Poetry” and A Philosophical View of Reform, “Ozymandias” becomes an exemplary revision of the emblematic sonnet form. Percy Bysshe Shelley embraced the power of poetry to not only express emotion, but also to share and promote personal ideology.
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