Shelley's Poetry

Shelley''s detractors since Hazlitt have noticed a division in the ''self'' of his poems. A central reasoning core fears the passions surrounding it and distrusts the language expressing it. A few of his admirers offer an alternative view of the poems as symbolical pointers to a non-linguistic reality transcending passion; most miss the point, justifying their admiration by referring to the poems'' systems of thought. This reading of Shelley''s major poems and critical prose finds the adverse case more convincing.