Hymns and Habits: Examining Defamiliarization in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” Esther Oziel College

Percy Shelley uses defamiliarization in “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” as a tool to dismantle religious belief systems. Defamiliarization is a literary technique used to make that which is known and familiar appear different and new. Viktor Shklovsky argues that one’s perceptions became habitual, and it is this habitualization that prevents one from sensing the object. Rather, people go on unconsciously interacting with life without ever actually engaging in it or interacting with it. Jean Cocteau argues that one’s interactions with the objects prohibit the image, and one no longer sees it anymore. In “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” Shelley strips the Spirit of Beauty of the associations people assign to it so that one is able to see it purely for what it is. He denounces the use of religious terms to describe the Spirit, making the Spirit unfamiliar as most people would engage with it in religious terms. “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” is an ironic twist on the traditional hymn, and instead of praising religion and God, it removes the mask of habit that religion places on the Spirit of Beauty.

Defamiliarization is a literary technique that reveals the hidden beauty of things by making them unfamiliar. The technique accomplishes...