The Revolt of Islam

The Revolt of Islam (1818) is a poem in twelve cantos composed by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1817. The poem was originally published under the title Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century by Charles and James Ollier in December 1817. Shelley composed the work in the vicinity of Bisham Wood, near Great Marlow in Buckinghamshire, northwest of London, from April to September. The plot centres on two characters named Laon and Cythna who initiate a revolution against the despotic ruler of the fictional state of Argolis, modelled on the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Despite its title, the poem is not focused on Islam as a specific religion, though the general subject of religion is addressed, and the work draws on Orientalist stereotypes and themes. The work is a symbolic parable on liberation and revolutionary idealism following the disillusionment of the French Revolution.

In The Revolt of Islam, A Poem, in Twelve Cantos (1818), consisting of 4,818 lines, Shelley returned to the social and political themes of Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem (1813). The poem is in Spenserian stanzas with each stanza containing nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by a single Alexandrine line in iambic hexameter. The rhyme pattern is "ababbcbcc". It was written in the spring and summer of 1817. It was originally published under the title Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century. The publishers, Charles and James Ollier, however, refused to print the work because of its theme of incest and its statements on religion. Only a few copies were issued. They demanded changes to the text. Shelley made alterations and revisions. The work was republished in 1818 under the title The Revolt of Islam.

His wife Mary described the work as follows:

"He chose for his hero a youth nourished in dreams of liberty, some of whose actions are in direct opposition to the opinions of the world, but who is animated throughout by an ardent love of virtue, and a resolution to confer the boons of political and intellectual freedom on his fellow-creatures. He created for this youth a woman such as he delighted to imagine—full of enthusiasm for the same objects; and they both, with will unvanquished and the deepest sense of the justice of their cause, met adversity and death. There exists in this poem a memorial of a friend of his youth. The character of the old man who liberates Laon from his tower prison, and tends on him in sickness, is founded on that of Doctor Lind, who, when Shelley was at Eton, had often stood by to befriend and support him, and whose name he never mentioned without love and veneration."

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