Shelley’s Revolutions

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Shelley’s poetry expresses his faith that justice is radiantly simple; he was sure that if the world could be made to see the truth as clearly and passionately as he saw it, all selfishness would disappear. Yet, in his writing as in his personal life, he consistently displayed an indifference to reality that went deeper than his propaganda techniques. His political ideas are marked by the same contempt of consequences, the same elevation of pure motive over practical effects, the same lack of self-awareness. And since Shelley saw himself as a radical activist even in his poems—“I consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science,” he once declared—his passionate verse can’t be neatly divided from his totalitarian cast of mind.</jats:p>