Poetical Contribution of Shelley in the French Renaissance

Abstract

Political injustice, absolute power, and an economic catastrophe contributed to the French Revolution in 1789. The French society attacked the Bastille prison in July 1789, marking the beginning of the French Revolution. The Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternize values that the society fervently upholds create a republican state inspired by J.J. Rousseau. The idea was swiftly abandoned since it made people thinks of warfare. That becomes the ethos of democrats and liberals who promote democracy to defeat tyranny and an oppressive government. English Romantic poets were influenced by this idea to draw inspiration for their works from events in the French Revolutionary society. In response to the failure of the French revolution in 1789, romanticism gained popularity. The Percy Bysshe Shelley poems are grounded in this Rousseau’s theory. A literary work's character during the Romantic era is influenced by a love of nature, conscience, and a sympathetic attitude toward the underprivileged. The cultural antecedents of modern ethnicity and nationality are of interest to romanticism. The purpose and the main objective of the present survey is to investigate and interpret the text in the light of New Historicism in the selected poems of Shelley. The term new historicism invented by Greenblatt whose essays often have a new historicist approach “The foremost charge of new historicism is well-defined as literary texts are obligated with pretentious constructions; which are the part of history and still in the process of composition”.(Muller, 2013).The textual analysis reveals strong effect of French Revolution upon Shelley’s mind ideas about the French Revolution, such as freedom from oppression, humanity, camaraderie, liberty, and equity.