Conflict and Peaceful Democracy: Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Discourse of Sustainable Progressivism

This article explores Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ideas of revolution and reform with a focus on his political prose writings. I argue that his pamphlets and essays, from An Address, to the Irish People (1812) to the posthumously published A Philosophical View of Reform (1920), reveal the gradual, linguistic construal of a sustainable form of progressivism. Unlike his earlier poetic works, these writings, as I intend to show, embrace a gradualist and reformist agenda. To this end, I firstly introduce the concepts of «discourse», «sustainability», and «progressivism». Subsequently, I discuss Shelley’s discursive construction of revolution, reform, and the social actors involved by focusing on select key words and linguistic strategies that enable him to recontextualise reform as a social practice. Finally, I examine the extent to which A Philosophical View recasts Shelley’s reformist ideals within a framework grounded in sustainability and futurity, as the reception of his works suggests.