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Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Utopian Publicity: The Case of Poetic Writings



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Byoung Chun Min

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DOI:10.17265/2159-5313/2019.08.003

Many critics of Percy Bysshe Shelley have construed Shelley’s “poetry” as a sort of transcendental, mental mechanism through which a more fundamental improvement of human life than immediate political reforms can be made possible. In this view of Shelley’s poetry, the values that poetry would bring about are condescendingly set up against the general public’s down-to-earth wish to improve their immediate life conditions, and therefore, the utopian vision implicit in Shelley’s poetic practice is founded on an exclusion of intellectually and economically unqualified readers. Given these critical assessments, this essay attempts to argue that Shelley’s poetic writings include significant elements that contradict the assumption implied in the view that intellectual elites take an absolute, exclusive position in giving rise to Shelley’s utopian publicity. In more detail, this essay will argue that Shelley’s utopian publicity proposed and embodied in his poetic writings is predicated on his ideal (and practical in many cases) aim toward a realization of a public sphere that espouses free circulations of various positions and embraces voices of people from all the classes.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, poetry, intellectual elite, utopian publicity, free circulation