Shelley's Orientalia: Indian Elements in His Poetry.

Shelley, one of the major English Romantic poets, was greatly influenced by the Indian thought that reached him through the works of the early English Orientalists of his time. Although his dream of personally visiting India had never materialized, his favorite readings included Sir William Jones's poems and essays on Indian subjects in 1770s, Captain Francis Wilford's essay, "Mount Caucasus" (1801), Sidney Owenson's The Missionary: An Indian Tale (1811), and James Henry Lawrence's The Empire of the Nairs, or, The Rights of Women: An Utopian Romance (1811). This paper provides an account of the influence of these works on some of Shelley's major poems (such as Queen Mab, Alastor, The Revolt of Islam, Prometheus Unbound, "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" and "Adonais") in their setting, style, and themes. As a revolutionary, Shelley was influenced by the forces of liberation and freedom suggested by oriental models as opposed to the hackneyed and overused neoclassicism of European literature. This paper argues how his was an attempt at a sympathetic understanding of India as a cradle of ancient civilization that knew no divide in terms of the so-called Western moral and racial superiority. His creative vision of India embraced an approach to integration as opposed to the Victorian reaction of mixed feelings. In fact, the Indian influence was not just a matter of stylistic embellishment away from the traditional but an indirect yet powerful means of attacking Western political system he so passionately rebelled against. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]