Here you will get the detailed summary of IGNOU MEG 1 Block 7 –The Second Generation Romantic Poets: Shelley & Keats.
We have provided the summary of all units starting from unit 31 to unit 35.
Unit 31: The Poet of Volcanic Hope – P.B. Shelley
This unit presents an overview of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), a revolutionary poet known for his passionate commitment to freedom, truth, love, and political justice. Referred to as a “poet of volcanic hope,” Shelley combined idealism with lyric beauty, seeking through his poetry to inspire societal transformation. The unit outlines his tumultuous personal life—his rejection of institutional religion, expulsion from Oxford, radical political views, and tragic early death—which all shaped the rebellious and visionary energy of his verse.
Shelley’s poetry is characterized by:
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Mythic imagination and symbolic abstraction.
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Deep engagement with political and philosophical themes, especially concerning liberty, tyranny, and the potential for human renewal.
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An ecstatic, fluid, and often ethereal style, marked by musicality and complex metaphors.
His major works like Prometheus Unbound, Ode to the West Wind, and Adonais exemplify a unique fusion of poetic innovation and moral urgency. The unit situates Shelley as a poet who, despite living in exile and dying young, left behind a powerful poetic legacy of hopeful defiance and intellectual courage.
Unit 32: A Study of The Triumph of Life
This unit offers a critical analysis of Shelley’s unfinished poem The Triumph of Life, considered one of his darkest and most enigmatic works. Written shortly before his death, this poem diverges from Shelley’s earlier optimism and engages deeply with the problem of human failure and the loss of idealism.
The poem takes the form of a visionary dream, inspired by Dante and Petrarch, where the narrator sees a ghostly procession led by the blindfolded figure of Life, a force that triumphs over all human effort, beauty, and virtue. Historical and literary figures—Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Rousseau—appear as victims of life’s illusions, raising questions about power, fame, and the corruptibility of human ideals.
The unit discusses how the poem presents a tragic view of human history as dominated by deception and decline. Yet even within this bleak vision, Shelley continues to seek truth, liberation, and poetic transcendence. The fragment ends abruptly, enhancing its mystery, and inviting readers to reflect on life’s unresolved questions. The unit shows Shelley’s shift from revolutionary confidence to existential contemplation, revealing his poetic complexity and maturity.
Unit 33: Keats – Hyperion: A Fragment I
This unit introduces the poetic philosophy and stylistic features of John Keats (1795–1821), one of the most sensuous and aesthetically rich poets of the Romantic era. Unlike Shelley’s political idealism, Keats is deeply concerned with beauty, mortality, art, and the imagination. The unit focuses on his unfinished epic, Hyperion: A Fragment, which retells the fall of the Titans and the rise of the Olympian gods, using Greek mythology as an allegory for artistic evolution and philosophical change.
Hyperion represents a transition from the old to the new—from fading glory (the Titans) to new enlightenment (the Olympians). In Book I, Keats presents a cosmic landscape filled with sorrow, silence, and elemental forces, reflecting on the pain of displacement and the inevitability of change. The poem is written in blank verse, echoing Milton’s Paradise Lost, and shows Keats’s ambition to write in the high epic tradition.
The unit emphasizes how Keats blends myth with psychological and artistic themes, portraying the Titans not only as fallen gods but as symbols of poetic and cultural obsolescence. The poem meditates on what it means to be a poet in times of transformation.
Unit 34: Keats – Hyperion: A Fragment II
This unit continues the study of Hyperion, focusing on Book II and the early lines of Book III. Here, the poem delves deeper into the emotional and philosophical responses of the Titans to their fall. Key figures include:
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Oceanus, who introduces the idea that suffering leads to progress—that the fall of the Titans makes way for a higher, more enlightened order.
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Apollo, the god of light and poetry, who undergoes an epiphany in Book III, realizing the burden of divine and poetic responsibility.
The poem, though incomplete, reveals Keats’s central theme: the growth of the poet’s mind through pain, empathy, and awareness. The Titans are tragic not just because they fall, but because they symbolize outmoded forms of power and imagination. The emergence of Apollo symbolizes a new poetic consciousness, one based not on brute strength but on vision, insight, and inner transformation.
This unit demonstrates Keats’s philosophical depth, showing how he moves beyond personal lyricism to explore myth, destiny, and poetic identity. Although Hyperion remains unfinished, its grandeur and ambition place it among Keats’s most significant achievements.
Unit 35: The Romantic Age – A Review
The final unit in this block offers a comprehensive review of the Romantic Age, summarizing its major themes, literary achievements, and philosophical orientations. It distinguishes the two generations of Romantic poets:
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The first generation—Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge—focused on nature, childhood, innocence, and spiritual awakening.
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The second generation—Byron (not covered in detail in this block), Shelley, and Keats—were more concerned with idealism, revolt, imagination, mortality, and the limits of human aspiration.
The unit emphasizes how Romanticism was a response to:
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The Industrial Revolution and urban alienation.
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Enlightenment rationalism and mechanistic views of the universe.
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Social and political revolutions, particularly the French Revolution.
Romantic poetry is characterized by a shift from external order to internal experience, where emotion, imagination, and individual vision become the primary sources of truth. The poets explored personal identity, artistic purpose, and the sublime beauty of nature while also confronting despair, mortality, and philosophical doubt.
In reviewing both Shelley and Keats, the unit highlights their short but profound careers, their contrasting yet complementary poetic styles, and their lasting impact on literature. It concludes by showing how Romanticism laid the groundwork for later literary movements, including Victorian introspection and modernist experimentation.