Egalitarianism and enviromental awareness in P.B. Shelley's selected Poems

Abstract

This research examines environmental concerns in P. B. Shelley's selected poems. Shelley's poems are based on nature and natural phenomena. Shelley highlights the nature more than the humans. Humans are shown inferior to the nature and natural things. Birds, mountains, forest, and rivers is shown more powerful than other things or human beings in the poems. Shelley advocates for the egalitarian society for both human and nature where there is harmonious relation with nature. The interpretative framework of research studies such ecological concerns from the perspective of ecocriticism with a focus on ethics and egalitarianism. Deriving the insights from the scholars like CheryllGlotfelty,Greg Garrard and Kevin Hutchings, this study claims that Shelley's poetic egalitarianism subverts the conventional hierarchical relation between human and nature and thus advocates for new kind of relation between them based on equality. His poems give the cyclic picture of human beings as well as nature. Key words: environment, ecocriticism, ecology, egalitarian, natural phenomena, environmental literature.