Mont Blanc

Mont Blanc is both a setting and a character in its own right in the poem. The mountain is personified as a source of guidance and a beacon of truth. Shelley even metaphorically refers to the mountain’s ability to communicate directly with humanity, addressing it in the second person: “Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal / Large codes of fraud and woe” (80-81).

The Speaker

The poem is written from the perspective of an unnamed speaker who describes visiting Mont Blanc and staring into the Ravine of Arve. The poem revolves around the speaker’s embodied human presence in these physical environments. From the speaker’s deep internal reflections prompted by the presence of the majestic landscape and from the lauding of the vocation of poetry as a mode of connecting with the universe’s hidden truths, it is plausible to conflate the voice of...