Abstract

SAN MARTIN VARELA, Pablo. MATERIALISMO E IDEALISMO EN LA POÉTICA Y EN EL PENSAMIENTO POLÍTICO DE PERCY B. SHELLEY. Rev. chil. lit. [online]. 2012, n.81, pp. 107-118. ISSN 0718-2295.  http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0718-22952012000100006.

This essay presents a reading of the relationship between the poetics and political thinking of the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The analysis centers on his main theoretical works, but also endeavors to establish some general relations to different moments of his poetic production. The reading develops the contradiction that is posed by the conjunction of a historical materialism of Godwinian origin and a political idealism more proper to the humanistic tradition. In this context, this paper proposes that the communicating vessel between Shelley's political and aesthetic thinking is the idealistic assumption of continuity between conscience, will and social reality, which enables him to identify hiss poetic project with hiss politics. The essay concludes by understanding this contradiction within the logic of Utopian socialism, as it has been characterized by the historian Perry Anderson.

Keywords : English literature; Romanticism; aesthetics; politics; utopian socialism.