ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

LITERATURE QUESTIONS

ENGLISH ROMANTIC POETRY

Question [CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
Referring to poets as “unacknowledged legislators of the world” suggests that:
A
Most Romantic poets were politicians
B
Poets have no actual effect upon the world
C
Poets actually help the world grow and develop
D
Hardly anyone actually reads Romantic poetry
Explanation: 

Detailed explanation-1: -Shelley’s assertion that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” is the clearest illustration of his belief that imaginative practice and political activism were inextricably intertwined.

Detailed explanation-2: -In “The Defence of Poetry” 1821, Shelley claimed that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world". This has been taken to suggest that simply by virtue of composing verse, poets exert some exemplary moral power-in a vague unthreatening way.

Detailed explanation-3: -’Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’ is one of the best-known and most frequently quoted lines from the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), but, like John Donne’s ‘no man is an island’, it doesn’t come from a poem but from a work of prose.

Detailed explanation-4: -As for poets, Shelley considered them as “the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration”, because in poetry, there are combinations of a large amount of unapprehended thought. The reason that poetry can bring civilization to the society is poets are able to shift people’s mind into language.

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