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from Part II - Intellectual, Cultural, and Political Contexts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2025
This chapter explores Percy Shelley’s lifelong engagement with ‘empire’ by focusing on some of his major poems. His fascination with the ruins of empires, both ancient and modern, leads to a thorough critical examination of imperial violence. In Prometheus Unbound, Shelley redefines ‘empire’ as self-government that limits imperial dominance, which has far-reaching and international repercussions, as seen in the Gandhians’ resistance against British rule. Shelley goes on to examine the nature of empire in his final unfinished poem, ‘The Triumph of Life’, in which a triumphal chariot, the relentless force of empire originating from ‘Imperial Rome’, continues the cycle of subjugation throughout history. Against this chariot, Shelley places a resisting poet/narrator, who is asked, along with the readers of contemporary and future generations, to undertake the difficult task of envisioning a future unbound by imperial chains after the collapse of ‘empire’.
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