Intro thesis [ Aaron Lai ]

After the French revolution happened in late eighteenth century, people started to thinking what our ideal community supposed to be based on? Would change bring positive influence to our community or not? In both Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and Shelley’s A Defense of Poetry, they agree that our community should base on something that is external and never should be replaced by wholly new things, for Burke is authority and law, for Shelley is love and beauty. Burke considered that change would break our social hierarchy and order, but if poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, then change is possible because poets is not subjected by anything (403). Thus, Burke argues that authority is not supposed to be overturned but preserving the unchangeable tradition in terms of social hierarchy and power that has been handed down by our ancestors because it brings stability to our community. However, Shelley believes poetry can changed our community based on tradition which is love and beauty.

 

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