Revolutionary Voices: Percy Bysshe Shelley and Allen Ginsber

Abstract

The works of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Allen Ginsberg, two radical anti-establishment bards are united by the common roost of political and social revolution; this paper examines these inter-textual themes. This study seeks to determine whether and how a specific poetic technique - allusion -as employed by poets Shelley (in "The Masque of Anarchy" and "Ode to The West Wind") and Ginsberg ("Howl" and "America") can be regarded as a form of political subversion, such that, through an intense and sustained formal engagement with the substance of a society, one may resist, and ultimately seek to transform. Using inter-textuality, the study demonstrates common motifs and themes that reveal the lasting nature by which poetry can encapsulate radical thinking. The analysis contextualizes their poetry historically and culturally to illustrate how their poems engage with socio-political matters. The research elucidates how revolutionary ideologies in literature are cross-generational by showing the trans-historical nature of the poetic voice as a force of perpetual social revolution. This puts Shelley and Ginsberg back into the literary canon and reminds us of the way in which they have shaped current intellectual and practical social and political movements. Though one may have an explicit sense of how talented they are, this study presents the genius of their work in a more subdued fashion, and why their revolutionary discourse was so influential.