From Dead Thoughts and Withered Leaves to Unextinguished Hearth and Awakened Earth : Percy Bysshe Shelley in Politics and Society / George Ewane Ngide.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ngide, George Ewane, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822--Poetry.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe.

Millennialism.

Humanity--Poetry.

Humanity.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (240 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Washington, DC : Academica Press, [2024]

Summary:

In this thought-provoking new book, George Ewane Ngide explores Percy Byshe Shelley's poetry and visionary insight of a millennial future, an everlasting spring or a New Jerusalem where man will be "sceptreless-just man." Shelley's altruistic goal, Ngide asserts, is to reclaim the universe's original harmony, to forge a new future where humanity stands unshackled from evil, both social and political. How? Through universal love, nonviolence, and even vegetarianism. Shelley's poetic vision is contemporary, a clarion call to purge life of misery and evil. Ngide reveals Percy Bysshe Shelley as a celestial troubadour singing of a golden age yet to be. His words, like the snake that embodies time and change, slither through our collective consciousness, whispering of transformation. As we embark on this literary journey through Shelley's millennial dreams, Ngide's research demands that we heed his call and seek the "Golden Years" that will return after the lost paradise. In Shelley's verse, we find not mere escapism but a roadmap--a compass pointing toward a better tomorrow and the understanding that "Every discord is harmony not understood."

Contents:

From Dead Thoughts and Withered Leaves to Unextinguished Hearth and Awakened Earth:

Percy Bysshe Shelley in Politics and Society

George Ewane Ngide

From Dead Thoughts and Withered Leaves to Unextinguished Hearth and Awakened Earth:

Academica PressWashington~London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ngide, George Ewane (author)

Title: From dead thoughts and withered leaves to unextinguished hearth and awakened earth : percy bysshe shelley in politics and society | Ngide, George Ewane.

Description: Washington : Academica Press, 2024. | Includes references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2024944059 | ISBN 9781680533170 (hardcover) | 9781680533187 (e-book)

Copyright 2024 George Ewane Ngide

Dedication

To my parents, Ewane Dominic Ngondeand HULLE Emma EWANE

Best regards

Contents

Foreword xi

Preface xiii

Introduction 1

Dead Thoughts and Withered Leaves 3

1 Social Winter and Poetic Imagination 5

Religion 6

Non-Vegetarianism as Violence 25

Formal Marriage 35

Commerce: The Evil of Society 41

2 Political Individualism 49

Shelley and Political Evolution 50

Hypocrisy and Tyranny of the Ruling Class 53

The Hermit of Marlow 84

Unextinguished Hearth and Awakened Earth 95

3 Philosophic Imagination and Paradise Regained 97

Nonviolence 99

Vision of Vegetarianism 121

Shelleyan versus Darwinian View of Nature 133

Love as Monism 142

4 Unextinguished Hearth and Awakened Earth 147

Shelley's Vision of the Golden Age 149

Awakened Earth: Shelley and Cosmic Harmony 170

Bibliography 183

Primary Sources 183

Secondary Sources 184

II. Articles 207

III. Dissertations and Theses 222

IV. Internet Sources 223

Endnotes 225

Foreword.

IL BUON Tempo Verra": The Good Time Shall Come

Percy Bysshe Shelley, the Romantic visionary, beckons us toward a future bathed in celestial light-a utopian dawn where humanity sheds its burdens and dances upon the threshold of eternity. His words echo across centuries, resonating with hope, rebellion, and the promise of renewal. Inscribed on the ring he wore, the Italian phrase "IL BUON Tempo verra" encapsulates Shelley's unwavering belief: "The good time shall come". But what does this mean? What utopia does Shelley envision, and how does i

In this book titled

From Dead Thoughts and Withered Leaves to Unextinguished Hearth and Awakened Earth: Percy Bysshe Shelley in Socio-Politics, Professor George EWANE NGIDE pores the pages of Shelley's poetry to exhume his visionary insight of a millennial future, an Everlasting Spring or a kind of New Jerusalem where man will be "sceptreless-just man". Shelley's altruistic goal, the author asserts, is to reclaim the universe's original harmony. To forge a millennial future-a New Jerusalem-wher

How? Through universal love, nonviolence, and even vegetarianism. Shelley's poetic vision is contemporary, a clarion call to purge life of misery and evil. Percy Bysshe Shelley is here revealed as a celestial troubadour singing of a golden age yet to be. His words, like the snake that embodies time and change, slither through our collective consciousness, whispering of transformation. As we embark on this literary journey through Shelley's millennial dreams, heed his call. seek the "Golden Years

Professor Valentine N. UBANAKO

Vice Dean, Faculty of Arts, Letters and Social Sciences,

University of Yaoundé I.

Preface.

In the shadowed corridors of history, where the echoes of forgotten voices whisper through time, there exists a luminous thread-a poetic flame that transcends mere ink and paper. It is the legacy of Percy Bysshe Shelley, a tempestuous soul who dared to challenge the boundaries of thought and language. Within the pages, of this book entitled: From Dead Thoughts and Withered Leaves to Unextinguished Hearth and Awakened Earth: Percy Bysshe Shelley in Socio-Politics, we embark on a journey-a pilgrim

This book captures the senses and essences of humanity seen through the visionary insight of Percy Bysshe Shelley. All of Shelley's Romantic philosophy of paradise, paradise lost and the necessity of change to regain the lost paradise is handled in this book with penetrating insights and open vents of a celestial future through poetical visions. Shelley lampoons religion, commerce, meatatarians, formal marriage, hypocrisy and tyranny, violence and other socio-political ills that transformed man

For the universe to regain the lost paradise, Shelley envisions a society where these ills will be overcome and a new paradise of harmony established through a certain therapeutic drive, Will and Necessity. To achieve this, we traverse the tempests of revolution, where Shelley's pen ignited fires of change. We witness the resurrection of ideas, as if from an unextinguished hearth, casting sparks upon the fertile soil of human consciousness. For Shelley was more than a poet

he was a prophet-an o

Prof. George EWANE NGIDE

Introduction.

In A Defence of Poetry, Percy Bysshe Shelley makes a ringing declaration that "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." That statement is something of a litmus test for our belief in the socio-political significance of poetry especially given W.H. Auden's categorical and despairing conclusion in "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" that "poetry makes nothing happen: it survives / In the valley of its making…" (II, 5-6). Paul Foot holds that educators like to reduce poetry to "doggerel about

All his life Shelley was not, as his worshippers in later decades pretended, a "lyric" poet interested only in writing beautiful poetry. He was a man with revolutionary ideas, and he wanted to transmit them. His "Ode to the West Wind," for instance, was not, as seems to have been interpreted by scholars, a paean of praise to a wonder of nature. It is, truly and profoundly, a desperate appeal to the wind to:

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? (63-70)

The "dead thoughts" refer to Shelley's poetic and philosophic visions which are compared to "withered leaves," that is dry and lifeless leaves. In other words, Shelley's vision is now lifeless and unknown to the universe and the generations of men but, like the dead leaves that serve as manure for regeneration, his vision will be quickened and spread in the universe by the aid of the west wind. His vision, also compared to his words, having come to life is equally compared to a glowing and burni.

Shelley's vision spread to the universe is also compared to a "prophecy," an important, perhaps sacred message which only the poet-philosopher is privy to but which is now spread to the universe for a certain reawakening and consciousness. According to Shelley, although his dead thoughts and the uninformed universe are now likened to "Winter," the west wind will spread it around and this will bring a change to the universe, which change is equally compared to "Spring," a force of regeneration. S

Shelley's purpose in writing poetry is, therefore, to teach the universe the ways of life, ignite change and move the human race to an everlasting spring, a "new birth!" Through poetry "all mankind" will be awakened by "The trumpet of a prophecy!" which prophecy is the return to man's state of infinite goodness through socio-political mutations. Shelley wanted the truth about repression and exploitation to go ringing through each heart and brain, so that each heart and brain would unite in actio

Dead Thoughts and Withered Leaves

1Social Winter and Poetic Imagination

Shelley has been described as a poet and legislator of the world (Stuart Curan, 2). He dedicated his entire life to the happiness of men and sought to educate the human being to understand his society and environment. Shelley did not observe society as a spectator, rather as an actor and a crusader of what might rightly be termed the philosophical explanation to perceptible and imperceptible human evolution and thinking. This chapter examines those social behaviours that are man-made and that, a.

Shelley's social philosophy expresses the essence of his message to mankind. A picture of such a philosophy is embedded, nay, can be found, not only in his poetry but also in his prose. The prose works are used here because in them, Shelley presents his vision of society with an expository directness which is inevitably lacking in the more symbolic medium of poetry. This assertion is confirmed by Kenneth Neil Cameron in The Social Philosophy of Shelley. He holds firmly that "The key to the under.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-68053-318-5