On Shelley's Moral Outlook & Its Artistic Manifestation

P. B. Shelley is mainly regarded as one of the most outstanding 19th-century British Romantic poets in the academic circles of China. However, Concise Encyclopedia Britannica not only thinks highly of his poetic talent but also affirms his achievements as a philosopher and an essayist. And Shelley's moral theory acts as an indispensable part of his philosophic thoughts, just as Дьяконова,Н.Я. once pointed out that ethics views are the primary and the decisive views of him. Shelley forms his special moral outlook on the basis of acquiring and mastering other scholars'ideas. Shelley holds that the social morality, whose objective is the greatest happiness for the greatest majority of people, has two cornerstones, i.e. philanthropy and justice. In evaluating the morality values, we should attach importance to both motivation and effect with a preference to the former. And the focus of the morality research is to probe into the discrepancies between those activities which are related to happiness. And Shelley's moral outlook on love is special and unique-styled in his social morality ideas, in which the poet advocates ①The two parties in love should be equal and strive for the welfare and happiness of each other; ②People in love should combine corporal love with Platonic love with a preference for the latter;③Exclusiveness of love and traditional marriage system are irrational . After a vast reading and a careful analysis on the available research achievements in China, the author notes that the academia of China hasn't done enough work in the combined research on Shelley's moral ideas and its artistic manifestation. Therefore, taking Shelley's essays, correspondence, lyrics, long poems and poetic dramas into consideration, the author expounds on Shelley's moral outlook and its artistic manifestation as well as its causes, which haven't been discussed systematically before, in this thesis. And the author also tries to reveals further to the readers of this paper Shelley's identity as both a thinker and a poet through a contrast between Shelley and his peer poets, which will highlight the features of his moral thoughts.