Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

Madeleine Callaghan (University of Sheffield)

Ed. by Daniel Robinson, Widener University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.06: English Writing and Culture of the Romantic Period, 1789-1837.
Vol. editors: Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Daniel Robinson (Widener University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1817

Places

England ()

Genres and Modes

Lyric
Poem

Resources

Written in 1816 and published early in 1817, Shelley’s “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” is one of the poems composed during Shelley’s productive summer in Geneva. Tilottama Rajan argues that “Mont Blanc” (written shortly after “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”) and the “Hymn” “converge on the same problem: the mind’s need to transcend life by positing some transcendent, form-giving fiction” (Rajan 84). This insight suggests the seriousness of the poetic philosophy explored in the poem. Characterised by William Hazlitt as “a passionate dream, a straining after impossibilities, a record of fond conjectures, a confused embodying of vague abstractions” (quoted in Redpath 388), “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” offers a…

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2470 words

Citation: Callaghan, Madeleine. "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 April 2012 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=34178, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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