"Imagining" History:
Shelley’s Use of History as Rhetoric
in A Defence of Poetry
-- Richard Eichman
The connection between literature and history is
as old as the skill of writing, the two often appearing inseparable in the oldest
manuscripts. Fully aware of the similarities in form and purpose of these writings, Edith
Hamilton argues that the purpose of mythology is "to show us the way the human race
thought and felt untold ages ago. Through it, according to this view, we can retrace the
path from civilized man . . ." (13). She goes on to call Homer one of the most
important sources of Greek mythology (21). While Hamilton’s area of expertise was
ancient literature, her description could be easily applied to history. Aristotle compared
poetry to history and suggested that poetry was "more philosophical and a higher
thing than history: for poetry states tends to express the universal, history the
particular" (http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.1.1.html)
. Homer’s Iliad, for example, provides us with some valuable
historical information for consideration, in addition to its aesthetic value. The ruins,
referred to as "Troy VIIa" by historians, were of a city on the Hellespont
destroyed around 1235 B. C. and are considered the probable location of the Troy sacked in
Homer’s Iliad, because their location and approximate date of destruction
correspond with Homer’s description (Breisach, 5). Perspective creates the
distinction between literary and historical values.
In his introduction to Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Ernst
Breisach, noted historian and historiographer, makes some very important observations
about history that can be applied to literature. His position is that history is,
ultimately, the "commerce" between humanity and time:
Every important new discovery about the past changes how we think about the present and
what we expect of the future; on the other hand every change in the conditions of the
present and in the future revises our perception of the past. In this complex context
history is born ostensibly as reflection on the past; a reflection which is never isolated
from the present and the future. History deals with human life as it "flows"
through time. (2)
Since history can be reinterpreted based on events of the recent and distant past, it
lends itself to some level of subjectivity–in this way, history becomes individual.
This is the basis for the constant need for new interpretations of history; it is a
discipline where all information requires a context, and that information is always
changing because each new interpretation of history changes the context for the rest of
what is known about history. Here, history is very much like literary criticism because
each new explanation affects what is written before as well as after it, but readers
should be aware of the underlying assumptions and secondary motives implied by these
writings. Percy Shelley’s work illustrates both the need for the constant revision in
history and literature and the secondary goals that these writings sometimes have. Based
on a progressive interpretation of history, Percy Shelley uses history as rhetoric in A
Defence of Poetry to advance his argument of the importance of poetry in society, and
in doing this, he positions himself as one of the greatest poets.
In writing about poetry, Shelley places it in history and in a cultural and
intellectual context. Shelley’s entrance into the conversation is perfectly natural
because he wrote at a time when the disciplines were only beginning to part. Given the
nature of essay writing, Shelley viewed A Defence of Poetry as both literature
and history. In Shelley’s era, history and literature were virtually the same because
both were ventures in eloquence, rhetoric, and narrative–only the motives were
significantly different. Where poetry was primarily concerned with beauty and perhaps some
didacticism, according to the taste of individual authors, histories were first meant to
discuss the relationship between the past and present, thus imparting important lessons,
but histories were no less concerned with aesthetics–they were erudite statements for
the cultivated. While defining poetry, Shelley writes a history of poetry, and in effect,
his work seeks to place poetry in history.
When Shelley wrote A Defence of Poetry, the current historiographic approach
was progressive and optimistic, which probably affected his approach to history and his
view of his place in history. According to Breisach, amid several competing theories,
progressivism became a dominant approach with the publication of the Marquis de
Condorcet’s Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind
(1793-1794) (205). Breisach’s description of this text reflects the general
characteristics of the Romantics: "Past, present, and future were once more linked in
a development with a common direction; this time not toward a spiritual goal but toward
human betterment in this world" (205). Ideologically similar, the Romantics believed
that the culture was advancing, but progress required active assistance. Blake viewed the
French Revolution and the emergence of America as progress (except for the physical
violence of revolution), as he indicated in his illuminated books Europe a Prophecy
and America a Prophecy; Byron fought for the unification and independence first
of Italy, then Greece; and Shelley wrote on Irish freedom and other political subjects.
In his biography, Richard Holmes writes that Shelley first became aware of
Condorcet’s writing through Dr. James Lind during Shelley’s last two years at
Eton (25) and turned to other "radicals" like Voltaire, Paine, Franklin,
Rousseau, and Godwin (43). Shelley’s actions and readings suggest that he agreed with
the progressivist or positivist theory, a theory that argued that "the march of
history had slowed down at times but could never aim anywhere else but
‘forward’" (208).
Shelley’s A Defence of Poetry was written to refute The Four Ages of
Poetry by Thomas Love Peacock, which argued that poetry had become useless.
Peacock’s treatment of poetry was influenced by the opposition to the progressive
theory of history: Giambattista Vico’s cyclic theory of history. According to
Breisach, Vico’s theory outlined three stages in human civilization: the Age of Gods,
the Age of Heroes, and the Age of Men (210-213). In the first, society was primitive, with
all things coming from God, and records of the time came through the generations as myths.
The Age of Heroes began the political/civil state. Heroes were half gods and were recorded
in the verse-tales of their heroic deeds. The final stage, the Age of Men, featured a
highly structured society, and histories were narrative tales. At the end of the last
stage, the cycle would start over again. After the French Revolution and the Napoleonic
Wars of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, there was no more need for
heroes: the era had ended. Peacock’s positioning of the poet in society makes this
point clear:
A poet in our times is a semi-barbarian in a civilized community. He lives in the days
that are past. His ideas, thoughts, feelings, associations, are all with barbarous
manners, obsolete customs, and exploded superstitions. (578)
Poetry was the medium of the previous age, and in Peacock’s scheme, that was the
Age of Heroes; he must have considered the current era to be the Age of Men, a time when
logic and reason were at their highest degrees in the cycle. However, this betrays
Peacock’s own agenda: since he was not a poet and had no stake in poetry, it was in
his interest to move the highest form of writing to prose–his art–which forces
him to prefer Vico’s schema of cyclic history. In the most advanced stages of
society, prose is the most cultivated written art because it favors reason and logic.
Differences in ideology and investments in art forms between Shelley and Peacock put
them at odds. Shelley uses Condorcet’s system as a base but modifies it to give
poetry a more significant role in civilization. Early in Shelley’s essay, he detaches
poetry from any specific historical era: "Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined
to be ‘the expression of the Imagination . . ." and is "connate with the
origin of man" (489). The use of imagination cannot be limited to a specific era, due
to its connection with art, which dates back to prehistory. To make his argument viable,
Shelley’s first task must be to alter the nature of historiography; Condorcet’s
view did not give a specific medium for historical writing, so Shelley could disavow a set
time period without creating inconsistencies in his argument. He defines poetry as a noble
art that belongs to all humans and moves toward discrediting Vico’s theory because
his scheme of poetry is only for history during the second stage of the cycle.
Condorcet’s view would, when connected to poetry, suggest that poetry would be
improving just as society was. In this scheme, society would improve with each passing
generation; likewise, poetry would make the same progression. Its removal from lyrical
history, in the sense of Peacock and Vico, would allow it that ability to advance.
Shelley believed poetry to be the highest form of writing, and elevated verse to the
highest art by connecting it to "Imagination" as opposed to making it merely a
medium of history. He distinguished between stories and history by saying that "a
story is a catalogue of detached facts which have no other bond of connexion than time,
place, circumstance, cause, and effect . . ." (493). This relegates prose fiction to
a lesser form of expression and seems to have only a distant relationship with history.
However, poetry was for Shelley "the creation of actions according to the
unchangeable forms of human nature as existing in the mind of the creator, which is itself
the image of all other minds" (493). Poetry is an expression of the truths that exist
in all humanity; not all poetry is history, but history can contain poetry.
Jean Hall argues that Shelley saw the poet’s thought as representing the best of
humanity: "Poetry becomes the opposite quantity to selfhood and assumes a divine
character because it transcends normal boundaries of human identity" (141). He
ascribes the greatest faculties, achievements, and vision (in the broadest sense) to
poets:
Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic
shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they
understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the
influence which is moved not, but moves. (513)
Very subtly, while arguing the relationship of verse to history, Shelley has suggested
that poetry is the highest form of writing, based on the idea that only it gives thoughts
that are at the heart of humanity and, through this argument, has placed himself as a
great poet by suggesting that poetry was improved alongside society; thus, as one of the
newest poets, Shelley would of course be among the finest poets. Even though his poetry
and historical time would be superceded, he would still be the measurement of his time,
the future’s window into Shelley’s era.
Shelley’s visionary notion of poetry affects his sense of history by making it
less concerned with "factual" information than it is with those truths which can
be arrived at through language itself. Shelley’s attack has two prongs: first to
convince the reader that there is a natural beauty in humanity and, second, that language
in rhythm is as old as humanity:
In the youth of the world, men dance and sing and imitate natural objects, observing in
these actions, as in all others, a certain rhythm and order. And although all men observe
a similar, they observe not the same order, in the motions of the dance, in the melody of
the song, in the combinations of language, in the series of their imitations of natural
objects. (490)
Shelley fails to give an exact date or era because it is not necessary for his
interpretation of history; poetry’s transcendent quality makes the writing seem to
escape conventional time in its audience and subject. The use of Imagination diminishes
the value of conventional understanding; in effect, Shelley would argue that focusing too
much on trivialities like dates would obscure anything valuable in history. Unlike
Peacock’s (and Vico’s) notion of history, Shelley viewed the late eighteenth
century and the early nineteenth centuries as neither an era to be labeled as
"barbaric" nor a time of "lesser" value–as evident in his use of
"order" to describe the state of the world but– requires devaluing some of
the traditional ideas of civilization that might use events of the 1790s to reduce
Shelley’s time to an example of chaos. Shelley connects nature’s order, ornate
language, and people who observe. According to Shelley, poetry dates to the "youth of
the world." Homer and other poets figure into Shelley’s argument because they
seem to be the proof for his position; Greek and other literatures provide evidence for
poetry more than 2,000 years ago. This historiography, heavily influenced by Condorcet,
depends less on the lifeless facts than it does on the vitality of language to maintain
its value.
Shelley’s essay suggests two errors in Vicoan theory: the people were not savages
and poetry was not confined to the Heroic Age. Shelley describes humanity as open to
beauty, even able to interpret and find language for it; aesthetic appreciation is not
something likely to be found in barbarians. Since there is poetry in all points of history
leading back to Homer, the three age theory shared by Peacock and Vico is weakened. One
could argue that the earliest examples of poetry did, in fact, belong to the Age of
Heroes, but the existence of poetry since then leaves an unresolved problem unless the Age
of Heroes was still in progress when Vico (1688-1744) and Peacock (1785-1866) lived.
Peacock would have been mistaken because, according to his comments in The Four Ages
of Poetry, he believed that he was living in the Age of Men:
Poetry was the mental rattle that awakened the attention of intellect. In the infancy
of civil society: but for the maturity of mind to make a serious business of the
playthings of its childhood, is as absurd as for a full-grown man to rub his gums with
coral, and cry to be charmed to sleep by the jingle of silver bells. (579)
In addition to taking a position on poetry’s place in history, Shelley placed the
poet at the nexus between nature and the heart of humanity. In light of his work as a
poet, he positioned himself as a part of the highest order of people: those who could
imagine the past, present, and future–people who were in touch with beauty in its
deepest sense. In his scheme, poets were the beginning and center of everything that was
worthwhile in society:
But Poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible order, are not only the
authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and
painting; they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the
inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers who draw into a certain propinquity with
the beautiful and the true, that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible
world which is called religion. (491)
Against Peacock and Vico, Shelley argues that poets are not merely the recorders and
historians of a middle stage but priests and creators of all stages of society.
Shelley’s position is purely Aristotelian. Where Vico and Peacock argue that poetry
has only limited use in a short segment of history, Shelley works to discredit Vico and
places poetry and, by implication, himself as the visionary center of society.
Rhetorically and poetically, Shelley has made himself completely indispensable. He has
made himself the architect and builder, and poetry the foundation of society and then he
becomes the critic who proclaims it wondrous. By 1821, when he wrote A Defence of
Poetry, Shelley had written nearly all of the poetry he would live to create; it was
perfectly reasonable for him to call himself a poet. Therefore, it would not be possible
for Shelley to allow Peacock’s essay to go unanswered; that would be Shelley allowing
Peacock to call his life’s work useless. However, in an essay outlining the history
of poetry, Shelley could restore the dignity of poets and poetry and create a place for
himself in that history–as the author. He accepts the place of the poet/historian by
sensing the order and interpreting it in ways more sensitive than the other people who
dance and sing in the "youth of humanity" (490). His strategy sets him as the
representative and champion of the highest form of the people in society and history.
Having established himself as the defender of poets, Shelley reconnects poetry and
history and thus keeps himself in the role of both poet and historian. To establish a
greater base of credibility for historians, Shelley moves to a broader definition of
poetry which includes lines of poetry enclosed in prose works, provided that those lines
have "subjects with living images" (494). Shelley uses this expansion to name
Herodotus, Plutarch, and Livy, all great historians, as great poets. Through this act, he
makes himself one of the greatest of historians by being able to incorporate the
occasional poetic line into a work of history and create poetry independent of history. He
would have to be one of the greatest of all historians, even if his contemporary critics
considered him a mediocre poet, but since he believed that he was a great poet, he has
constructed a circuitous claim by his rhetoric to be a truly brilliant mind both in poetry
and history. Either by his own poetry or his history of poetry, Shelley includes himself
as one of the great poets.
For Shelley, as for many other scholars of the period, there was little or no
distinction between literature and history. In his description of poetry, he writes:
Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects
be as if they were not familiar; it reproduces all that it represents, and the
impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those who
have once contemplated them, as memorials of that gentle and exalted content which extends
itself all thoughts and actions with which it coexists. (495)
Literature, according to Shelley, performs the same functions as history: both show a
new way of looking at the contemporary world, give profound insight into the past, and
stand as reminders of great minds of earlier times. History makes the familiar unfamiliar
by providing new and better contexts through interpretations, as a story about humanity
that is always being edited and reedited.
Shelley also saw poetry as enriching humanity in both aesthetic and practical senses,
equating poetry with all knowledge and further discrediting the Vicoan model in an
Aristotelian sense by invalidating the cycle of history through Peacock’s limited
poetics. The Condorcet model of history, endorsed and amended by Shelley, would suggest
progression by way of carrying technological and intellectual advancements through
aestheticism. He expanded poetry beyond aesthetic exercises or historical narrative to
include explorations into other areas of inquiry. Shelley writes:
Poetry is indeed divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge; it is
that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is
at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from
which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if blighted denies the fruit
and the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the succession of
the scions of the tree and life. (508-09)
Here, Shelley has asserted that poetry is not only still a valuable part of science,
but all intellectual life, in effect balancing Peacock’s notion of society on
Shelley’s poet. Although poetry is meant to be beautiful, it cannot and should not
exclude the intellectual accomplishments of its age. This is the heart of Shelley’s
definition of poetry.
Some scholars, like Frederick Pottle, have even suggested that Shelley’s work is
related to prophecy because his was "to create an apocalypse of the world formed and
realized by Intellectual Beauty of Love" (368). In A Defence of Poetry, he
was not concerned with a formal political history that would have described governments
and national power, structures or wars. Instead, he focused on culture through poetry, and
in effect, charges poets with writing a history that represents and cultivates the culture
and the age as a whole.
In a time when the distinction between history and literature was tenuous at best,
Shelley was striving to define poetry, and in doing so, he created a place for himself
that showed him as one of the great minds. Profoundly influenced by Marquis de Condorcet,
Shelley, in The Defence of Poetry, formulated a definition of poetry which
accommodated Condorcet’s belief that civilization is constantly working toward
perfection. The rhetoric for Shelley’s position favors him in an interesting fashion:
if society is getting better and poets are among the best and most sensitive members of
that society, then Shelley must be one of the greatest to have lived because he was a fine
poet of his age, the newest and best ever. It is true that his time would be superseded,
but Shelley would still be immortalized, just as Homer had been. For Shelley, poetry was
ornate and musical language written by a person who was uncommonly aware of nature’s
beauty. Furthermore, the poet was a person who was able to render thoughts and feelings
beyond his or her own generation, as an ambassador of intellect and culture to all
following generations.
Richard Eichman
Works Cited
Aristotle. Poetics, trans. S. H. Butcher, 1994-1998, MIT Program in Writing
and Humanistic
Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, February 10, 2000, <http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.sum.html>
Breisach, Ernst. Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. 2nd
ed. Chicago: U. of Chicago P., 1994.
Hall, Jean. "The Divine and Dispasionate Selves: Shelley’s Defence and
Peacock’s The Four Ages." Keats-Shelley Journal: Keats, Shelley,
Byron, Hunt, and Their Circles 41 (1992): 139-63.
Hamilton, Edith. Mythology: Timeless Tales of gods and Heroes. 1940. New York:
Meridian, 1989.
Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1975.
Peacock, Thomas Love. "The Four Ages of Poetry." Prose of the Romantic
Period. Ed. Carl R. Woodring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961. 569-580.
Pottle, Frederick A. "The Case of Shelley." English Romantic Poets:
Modern Essays in Criticism. Ed. M. H. Abrams. 2nd ed. London: Oxford U.
P., 1975. 366-83.
Shelley, Percy B. The Defence of Poetry. Prose of the Romantic Period. Ed.
Carl R. Woodring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961. 488-513.
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