Percy Bysshe Shelley

Prometheus Unbound — the radical visionary of Romanticism

The most intellectually radical of the English Romantic poets — atheist, revolutionary, and lyric genius. Shelley fused political idealism with a soaring, ethereal music unmatched in English verse. Prometheus Unbound is his great visionary drama of liberation; 'Ode to the West Wind' and 'To a Skylark' are among the supreme lyrics of the language; and his Defence of Poetry called poets 'the unacknowledged legislators of the world.' He drowned off the Italian coast at twenty-nine.

Key works

• Prometheus Unbound1820— A lyrical drama of cosmic liberation
  Poem
• Ode to the West Wind1820— 'If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?'
  Poem
• A Defence of Poetry1821— Poets as the unacknowledged legislators of the world
  Essay (published 1840)

Connections

External