The Revolt of Islam

Quiz: The Revolt of Islam by Percy Bysshe Shelley

1. Recall – Form: What verse form does Shelley use throughout The Revolt of Islam, and how does this formal choice contribute to the poem's sense of grandeur and epic ambition?

1. Recall – Opening Symbol: What two creatures are locked in combat at the very opening of the poem, and what does each one represent within the poem's symbolic framework?

1. Recall – Speaker/Characters: Who are the two central protagonists of The Revolt of Islam, and what is the nature of their relationship to each other?

1. Recall – Key Image: In Canto 5, Cythna returns having freed herself from captivity. From where does she deliver her message of liberation, and what does this setting symbolise?

1. Comprehension – Plot: Describe the arc of the revolution in the poem. What allows it to succeed initially, and what combination of forces brings about its downfall?

1. Comprehension – The Plague: How do the priests use the plague that strikes during the revolution, and what does Shelley suggest this reveals about the relationship between religion and political power?

1. Comprehension – Conclusion: What happens to Laon and Cythna after their deaths, and how does this ending shape the poem's overall message about the struggle for freedom?

1. Analysis – Symbolism: Fire appears in The Revolt of Islam with a dual significance. Explain both dimensions of this symbol, using Laon and Cythna's fate at the stake as your focus.

1. Analysis – Theme: How does The Revolt of Islam present the relationship between personal love and political freedom? Use Canto 7's depiction of Laon and Cythna's reunion as evidence.

1. Analysis – Context: Shelley wrote this poem in 1817 and initially published it under a different title with more controversial content. What biographical and historical pressures shaped the poem, and how are those pressures visible in the poem's treatment of religion and revolution?

Answer Key

1. Shelley uses the Spenserian stanza, a nine-line form with an elaborate rhyme scheme traditionally associated with allegory and romance. This choice lends the poem a sense of epic scale and historical weight, reinforcing its ambitions as a politically visionary work.

1. A serpent and an eagle are locked in combat. The eagle symbolises tyranny and the oppressive status quo, while the serpent — in a deliberate inversion of conventional symbolism — represents the revolutionary struggle for freedom and good.

1. The two protagonists are Laon and Cythna. They are lovers whose deep personal bond runs parallel to their shared political commitment to overthrowing tyranny and oppression.

1. Cythna delivers her message of liberation from a ship at sea. The sea symbolises both freedom of movement and the vast, unpredictable forces that lie beyond the reach of tyrannical control.

1. The revolution succeeds through peaceful means, with Laon playing a key role in a bloodless victory over the tyrant Othman's armies. It is then undone by a combination of foreign armies summoned by the tyrant, a plague that terrifies the populace, and priests who exploit fear to turn the people against the rebellion.

1. The priests interpret the plague as divine punishment for the rebels' godlessness, using it to incite religious persecution and rally the people against the revolution. Shelley uses this to argue that superstition and fear are deliberate tools of authoritarian religious power.

1. After their deaths at the stake, Laon and Cythna are transported to the Temple of the Spirit, where they reunite with the great liberators of history. This affirms the poem's central message: individual defeat is not the end, but part of an eternal, ongoing human struggle for liberty.

1. Fire represents both destructive persecution (the literal flames of the execution) and purifying, illuminating truth and passion. At the stake, the act of burning becomes spiritually inverted — rather than silencing Laon and Cythna, it transforms their deaths into a form of triumph, suggesting that the fire of oppression cannot extinguish the fire of idealism.

1. Shelley presents personal love and political freedom as inseparable and mutually sustaining forces. In Canto 7, Laon and Cythna's intimate reunion amid the tightening counter-revolution suggests that love is not a retreat from politics but its most essential foundation — the private expression of the same values of liberty and equality they champion publicly.

1. Shelley was writing in the shadow of the failed French Revolution and under a repressive British government. At twenty-four, he had been expelled from Oxford for atheism and was moving in radical political circles. The original version, Laon and Cythna, portrayed the heroes as siblings and lovers and expressed explicit atheism — both were revised under pressure, softening the incest and toning down the anti-religious content. These pressures are visible in the poem's careful but unmistakable critique of priests as instruments of tyranny and its portrayal of revolution as noble even in failure.