EXERCISES ON PAGE 234

1. As you read the text identify the main points listed below and answer the related questions which are meant to facilitate you understanding of the essay extract.

1-THE CREATIVE PROCESS:         How does the poet's mind work when the                        creative process is in progress?   Can the poet's will and reason control the process?

2-THE POET'S IDENTITY:                                        who is the poet? To what extent is he different from other men?

3-THE POET'S TASK:                                               what does the poet do and how?

4-DEFINITION OF POETRY                          what is the poetry?m what is it a source of?

                                                                             What function does it serve?

1-The creative process

 In Shelley's opinion, poetry is something that we cannot program. The creative process is something that poet's will and reason cannot control, because it does not come in mind when we want. A poet cannot say "well, now I'll write poetry", because the action must be compained by a sudden inspiration, that he cannot predict.

During the creative process, the poet's mind obeys to an invisible influence, that is outside his rational control.

2-The poet's identity

The poet is the happiest, the best, the wisest and the most illustriuous of all other men, because of he is the one who can have glory, virtues and pleasures.

The greatest poets have been men of the most perfect virtue, of the most consummate prudence and, also, the most fortunate of men. Poet, as for poet's of the first generation of Romanticism, is superior to all other men.

3-The poet's task

Poets have the task to make the world feel in harmony with hopes and fears it did not heed.

4-Definition of poetry

poetry is what makes immortal all the best things that are ithere in the world. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man. Poetry is something that let men feel emotions, by the more delicate poet's sensibility and his wide imagination.

2-Shelley's "A Defence of Poetry" was a major contribution to the Romantic movement's discusssion of poetry and the poet. What view of poetry and the poet did it help to establish?

The previous view of poetry and the poet, for example Coleridge and Wordsworth's view. They have already written about their personal point of view of poetry and the poet. Therefore, in my opinion, it has been simpler write this essay for Shelley.