Summary & Structure

English Lit: AQA GCSE Poetry - Love & Relationships, topic 2.1.1

Summary of Love's Philosophy

Here's some background to Percy Bysshe Shelley's Love's Philosophy:

Percy Bysshe Shelley was the husband of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein and friend of Lord Byron.
Percy Bysshe Shelley was a key Romantic poet.
The romantic movement encouraged a focus on the natural world and human passions over rationality and logic.

The narrator is addressing his lover in a two-part argument.
First, he presents love as connecting all parts of the earth and the universe.
In the second half of his argument, he applies this philosophy of connectivity to kisses. He is trying to convince his lover that to kiss him is the only natural course of action.

We can see the influence of the romantic movement on Love’s Philosophy.
Shelley sets up love as a belief system in itself that guides the universe and human behaviour.
Shelley elevates love and relationships to an almost religious pedestal.
Shelley presents a relationship as a negotiation, and love as a natural and inevitable fact.

This is also a poem about love in its early stages – this relationship is as of yet untested, and is still in the early exciting stages of courtship (dating).
The narrator’s hyperbolic (exaggerative) language shows the excitement of the prospect of this new relationship.
Unlike poems such as Winter Swans or Letters from Yorkshire that focus on relationships that are established, Shelley instead captures the thrill and excitement of a new relationship.

Here's some interpretations of the structure and form of Love's Philosophy:

The poem follows a short and simplistic structure – fitting with the narrator’s belief that what he is trying to argue is simple and natural.

But the poem is tightly structured in its argument.
Shelley uses the stanzas to develop the weight of evidence and ends with a rhetorical question to further emphasise the apparent inevitability of their relationship.

The poem also follows an ABAB rhyme scheme, which is simplistic and gives the poem a sweet and soft rhythm.
There are also two half-rhymes in each stanza, which are jarring (clashing or shocking) in the otherwise clear rhyme scheme.
These out of place rhymes seem to embody the two lovers' unnatural separation.

What did the Romantic movement encourage a focus on?
What did Percy Shelley's wife (Mary) write?
For how long has the relationship in Love's Philosophy been going?
What literary device does Shelley end the poem with to emphasise the inevitability of their relationship?
Which of these are true about the structure and form of Love's Philosophy?