Imagery of Fire and Dust in Byron and Shelley

P. B. Shelley A Defence of Poetry Prometheus Unbound (including the 'Preface') Ode to the West Wind Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: Canto III Manfred, a Dramatic Poem Lord Byron

ShelleyByron

ShelleyByron

..Shelley maintains the connections to physical, real-life elements, through the choice of using similes and analogies, retaining the idea of the poem as mimesis...the more direct, effective use of metaphor to convey the associated image chosen by Byron, adds an aspect to the purpose of the poem, shifting from a mimetic representation to that of a second nature, a poem as heterocosm.

All else had been subdued to me; alone The soul of man, like unextinguished fire, Yet burns towards heaven with fierce reproach, and doubt, And lamentation, and reluctant prayer, Hurling up insurrection, which might make Our antique empire insecure, though built On eldest faith, and hell's coeval, fear[.] (PU, Act III Scene 1) His very words are instinct with spirit; each is as a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable thought; and many yet lie covered in the ashes of their birth, and pregnant with a lightning which has yet found no conductor. (Percy B. Shelley)

a fire And motion of the soul which will not dwell In its own narrow being, but aspire Beyond the fitting medium of desire. (CH ll )..[the poet] must not pass the bounds of fitness: would he pass the flammantia moenia mundi (Lucretius), those flaming walls, that are the boundaries of the world? […] The man who transgresses these bounds, and sees such visions, loses himself in clouds, or buries himself in the darkness beneath. (George Dyer)

Byron, George: 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: Canto III' in Selected Poems, ed. by Susan Wolfson and Peter Manning (London : Penguin Classics, 1996), pp 'Manfred, a Dramatic Poem' in Selected Poems, ed. by Susan Wolfson and Peter Manning (London : Penguin Classics, 1996), pp Curran, Stuart, Poetic Form and British Romanticism (New York : Oxford University Press, 1986). Scott, M., 2011, WordSmith Tools. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis Software. Shelley, Percy Bysshe: 'A Defence of Poetry' in Selected Poetry and Prose, 2 nd ed. by D. Reiman (New York: W. W. Norton & co., 2002), pp 'Ode to the West Wind' in Selected Poetry and Prose, 2 nd ed. by D. Reiman (New York: W. W. Norton & co., 2002), pp 'Prometheus Unbound' (including the 'Preface') in Selected Poetry and Prose, 2 nd ed. by D. Reiman (New York : W. W. Norton & co., 2002), pp