The Platonic & Romantic in Keats & Shelley

Plato felt that only the to the highest degree trained philosophers with an awareness of the form of the Good were fit to correct society as leaders. While Keats and Shelley may agree that it is the highest judging that improves society, they both believe that role is manifested best in the workman "Poetry was, of course, never far from politics in Shelley's mind. The mind, at its most constructive, would build a better society. So, Cameron is surely discipline to add that the expression in poetry of this intellectual sweetheart is a power making for human progress, for it holds up a continual ideal and stimulates the mind to a creation of red-hot objects" (Pirie 26).

Despite thither being a rejection of some of Plato's concepts, there is still an appreciation for Platonic mental imagery and some of its concepts in both authors. For example, Plato argued that a plant is not just living but it also has sensations. It feels pain and pleasure and it has desires. In

Goellnicht, D. C. The Poet-Physician: Keats and Medical Science. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984.

Pirie, D. B. Shelley. Philadelphia, Open University Press, 1988.

Roe, N. Keats and History. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Lines indite on a Sudden Arrival of Fine hold up In May, we see a similar appreciation in Keat's "when he compares the pleasure certain by the bee and flower, respectively, to the pleasure received by a man and woman during sexual centre" (Goellnicht 101). Sensible things is a Platonic concept that comes to mind. Shelley, too, uses Platonic concepts and imagery in his works. In The Fall of Hyperion we can see the travail at transcending upward to the ideal forms, a concept originating with Plato "Mortal, that gravitational constant may'st understand aright,/I humanize my sayings to thins ear,/Making comparisons of earthly things;/Or thou might'st better listen to the wind,/Whose language is to thee a costless noise,/Though it blows legend-laden through the trees" (Roe 140).

However, despite the differences among the three,
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