Did you know the British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote protest poetry? Neither did I. He is most famous for penning the early 19th-cen romantics poems such as “To a Skylark” and “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.” As such, Shelley seems more a romantic dreamer like John Keats or William Wordsworth than a political firebrand like Lord Byron. Certainly, the titles of his poems appearing in my college sophomore lit course suggest little emotional expression beyond romantic passion.
Protest Literature’s Context
Imagine my surprise when his name turned up on a Google AI search for protest literature! (Yes, I confess to resorting to AI to write this blog post) Not that I expected to uncover many names or a curated list like for some of my other literature lists. Most protest literature reacts to a particular historical event such as the French Revolution (see Les Miserables). Another example is the American Civil War (see Red Badge of Courage). As such, it provokes a real life call-to-action in its readers like the Muckraker writings of Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbell.
Shelley’s Unsung Poem: Discovery
That search did turn up an interesting sub-category, however–protest poetry. Among the many names listed, (most of them mid-20th century), Shelley’s “The Masque of Anarchy” stood out. My unfamiliarity with this poem is hardly surprising since it was not published during Shelley’s lifetime. In fact, it wasn’t published until 1832, nine years after the poet’s death. Why? Its editor, friend and poet Leigh Hunt, thought “the public at large had not become sufficiently discerning to do justice to the sincerity and kind-heartedness of the spirit that walked in this flaming robe of verse.”
Shelley’s Unsung Poem: Content and History
The seeds for this type of poetic expression first appeared the previous year when Shelley published his “The Revolt of Islam.” In it, he expressed some of the passion which served as the epigraph in the Hunt publication: “Hope is strong; Justice and Truth their winged child have found.”
However, this assertion received its full voice the following year. Outraged at the deaths of 18 people who died from a cavalry charge into a crowd of 60 thousand people demanding parliamentary reform, the Peterloo Massacre inspired Shelley to replace the unjust proponent of authority of his time, “God, King, and the Law,” with a new form of social action, “Let a great assembly be, of the fearless, of the free.” Stated as such, literary experts such as Paul Foot and Richard Holmes consider it the first modern expression of nonviolent resistance and the “greatest political poem ever written in English.”
Shelley’s Unsung Poem: Legacy
Many change-makers have used Shelley’s unsung poem’s meter and imagery to inspire their political efforts. Educator and activist Howard Zinn used the poem’s “very special power” to inspirte and educate the members of the American labor movement. Students at the Tiannamen Square protests in 1989 and protestors at Tahrir Square in 2011 recited the poem during their protest vigils. Shelley’s line “Ye are many-they are few” inspired the campaign slogan “We are many, they are few” used by Poll Tax protestors in 1989. And Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, used a variant of that line for the subtitle of his 2016 book, Saving Capitalism.
Relevance to Today’s Anti-Trump Rrotests
The parallels between 19th century injustices and authoritarian brutality should be apparent to anyone. Moreover, Shelley’s appeal to nonviolent tactics inspired Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King and others as an effective way to combat government oppression.
More than that, however, Shelley’s poem identifies the tactics and energy reserves urdinary citizens have available to change things for the better. Rather than confined to some out-of-way, dusty shelf, poets and writers like Shelley remain relevant to today’s problems. Brutality and government overreach occur in every century. Shelley and today’s poets and writers provide the vision and inspiration to overcome injustice non-violently.