The following version of Percy Shelley’s poem “Mont Blanc” was used to create this guide: Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “Mont Blanc.” Shelley: Poetical Works, edited by Thomas Hutchinson, Oxford University Press, 1967, p. 214.

Note that all parenthetical citations throughout the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

“Mont Blanc” was composed in the summer of 1816 while Percy Shelley was visiting the Chamonix valley of France, home to Mont Blanc, the highest peak of the Alps and the highest point of elevation on the European sub-continent.

The poem is written in the high Romantic style, which was often characterized by a mystical reverence for nature and humanity’s place within it. In the verse, Percy Shelley contemplates the majesty and mystical qualities of the natural world, noting how the splendor of human consciousness flows from the natural order, which remains opaque to most human observers. Shelley’s poem is self-reflexive in that it positions the poet who, in the act of composing verse in accord with nature, acts as a privileged agent in unlocking the truths of the natural world.