The theme of poet as legislator reached its peak in the

Romantic era Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...

, epitomised in Shelley's view of poets as the 'unacknowledged legislators of the world'. However the concept had a long prehistory in Western culture, with classical figures like

Orpheus In Greek mythology, Orpheus (; , classical pronunciation: ) was a Thracians, Thracian bard, legendary musician and prophet. He was also a renowned Ancient Greek poetry, poet and, according to legend, travelled with Jason and the Argonauts in se ...

Solon Solon (; ; BC) was an Archaic Greece#Athens, archaic History of Athens, Athenian statesman, lawmaker, political philosopher, and poet. He is one of the Seven Sages of Greece and credited with laying the foundations for Athenian democracy. ...

being appealed to as precedents for the poet's civilising role.

Classical origins

Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...

's opposition to poets in his ideal Republic was predicated on the contemporary existence of

Homer Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...

ic expounders who claimed that "a man ought to regulate the tenour of his whole life by this poet's directions". Plato only allowed the already censured poet to guide the young, to be an acknowledged legislator at the price of total external control. Less threatened by the poetic role, the Romans by contrast saw poetry, with

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC), Suetonius, Life of Horace commonly known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). Th ...

, as primarily pleasing, and only secondarily as instructive.

Renaissance and Augustan views

Building on the view of the fifteenth century Florentine

Neoplatonists Neoplatonism is a version of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a series of thinkers. Among the common i ...

of the poet as seer, however,

Sir Philip Sidney Sir Philip Sidney (30 November 1554 – 17 October 1586) was an English poet, courtier, scholar and soldier who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age. His works include a sonnet sequence, '' Astrophil and ...

developed a more powerful concept of the poet as overtopping the philosopher, historian and lawyer to stand out as "the monarch...of all sciences. Such a viewpoint was more or less institutionalised in

Augustan literature Augustan literature (sometimes referred to misleadingly as Georgian literature) is a literary genre, style of British literature produced during the reigns of Anne, Queen of Great Britain, Queen Anne, George I of Great Britain, King George I, a ...

, Johnson's Rasselas maintaining for example that the poet "must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind" – a fully public, even patriotic role moreover

Romantic peaks

By contrast the Romantic view of the poet as ''unackowledged'' legislator emerges at the turm of the century in the writing of

William Godwin William Godwin (3 March 1756 – 7 April 1836) was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism and the first modern proponent of anarchism. Godwin is most famous fo ...

, with his anarchic view of the poet as "the legislator of generations and the moral instructor of the world". It received its most memorable formulation however in

Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was an English writer who is considered one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame durin ...

's 1821 " A Defence of Poetry". Shelley maintained that, through their powers of imaginative understanding, 'Poets' (in the widest sense, of ancient Greece) were able to identify and formulate emerging socio-cultural trends; and were as a result "the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration...the unacknowledged legislators of the world".

Modernist irony

The grand claims of the Romantics began to give way in the twentieth century to a more ironic stance – Yeats speaking for his calling in general when he wrote "We have no gift to set a statesman right". What remained of the Shelley claim was to be further diminished by

Postmodernism Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, Culture, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting ...

's distrust for grand narratives, if not perhaps destroyed entirely.

References

{{Reflist, 30em The arts Concepts in aesthetics English male poets Themes of the Romantic Movement

Classical origins

Renaissance and Augustan views

Romantic peaks

Modernist irony

See also

References