Reading Order
Defence of PoetryA Defence of Poetry Reading Order
A Defence of Poetry (written 1821; published 1840) by Percy Bysshe Shelley is the most important statement of Romantic critical theory in English — a prose essay arguing that poetry is not a decorative amusement but the supreme human faculty, and that poets are 'the unacknowledged legislators of the world.' Shelley wrote it in response to his friend Thomas Love Peacock's 'Four Ages of Poetry' (1820), which had argued in the comic-ironic mode that poetry was becoming socially obsolete as philosophy and science developed to handle the real questions of human existence. Shelley's reply is impassioned, visionary, and deliberately systematic: he defines poetry as the expression of the imaginative principle (not merely verse but all creative activity that enlarges the human capacity for sympathy and understanding), traces it through history (Homer, the dramatists, Dante, Milton), and argues that its social function is absolutely essential — poetry cultivates the moral imagination, enables people to feel themselves into others' situations, and creates the emotional and imaginative preconditions for justice and love. The famous final sentence — 'Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world' — has been the most disputed and most reprinted sentence in Romantic criticism. The essay was not published in Shelley's lifetime and appeared only in 1840, nearly twenty years after his death.
Where to start
A Defence of Poetry (1821) — the Norton Critical Edition of Shelley's Poetry and Prose (ed. Donald Reiman and Sharon Powers) is the standard text; any good Romantic critical anthology will include it. Read Peacock's 'Four Ages of Poetry' first if possible — the Defence is a response and is more vivid if you know what Shelley is arguing against.
Complete Defence of Poetry Book List
- 1Buy
Shelley: Poetry and Prose (Norton Critical Edition)
Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Donald Reiman and Sharon Powers)·2002·The standard scholarly edition — includes the Defence with Peacock's 'Four Ages of Poetry' for context, and the full critical apparatus; the best text for reading the Defence in its polemical context. - 2Buy
Biographia Literaria
Samuel Taylor Coleridge·1817·The companion Romantic critical work — Coleridge's account of the imagination and its relationship to poetry runs parallel to Shelley's Defence; reading both together gives the most complete picture of Romantic critical theory in English. - 3Buy
Prometheus Unbound
Percy Bysshe Shelley·1820·The creative work that the Defence theorizes — reading Prometheus Unbound alongside the Defence shows how Shelley's theory operated in his practice; the drama is the most complete embodiment of the Defence's argument about poetry and liberation. - 4Buy
Preface to Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth·1800·The companion statement of Romantic poetics — Wordsworth's Preface and Shelley's Defence together constitute the foundational documents of Romantic critical theory; reading them alongside each other reveals both the common ground and the significant differences. - 5Buy
The Function of Criticism at the Present Time
Matthew Arnold·1865·The Victorian critical essay that most directly inherits Shelley's Defence — Arnold's argument that criticism has a cultural mission and that 'the best that has been thought and said' defines civilization is the Victorian development of Shelley's argument about poetry's social function.
Defence of Poetry — Frequently Asked Questions
What does Shelley mean by 'poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world'?
Shelley's famous phrase at the end of A Defence of Poetry (1821) argues that poets — defined broadly as all creators of imaginative works that enlarge the human capacity for sympathy, including Homer, Dante, and Milton — shape the emotional and imaginative life of humanity in ways that precede and condition all social, political, and moral change. 'Unacknowledged' because their influence is not direct or recognized: they do not write laws or govern armies, but they create the imaginative frameworks within which people conceive of justice, love, and possibility. Without poetry, Shelley argues, humans cannot feel themselves into others' situations, and without that capacity for imaginative sympathy, no lasting social improvement is possible.
Why did Shelley write A Defence of Poetry?
Shelley wrote A Defence of Poetry (1821) in direct response to his friend Thomas Love Peacock's satirical essay 'The Four Ages of Poetry' (1820), which argued that poetry had been superseded by philosophy and science as a vehicle for human understanding. Peacock's argument was partly a joke but partly serious: in an age of reason and progress, the primitive imaginative faculty of poetry was becoming obsolete. Shelley's reply argues the reverse: in an age of increasing scientific rationalism and industrial capitalism, the imaginative faculty that poetry cultivates — the capacity to identify with others, to feel beauty, to conceive of a world different from the present one — is more essential than ever.
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