Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Percy Shelley: Trendsetting Vegetarian

'The poet adopted a "Pythagorean" diet, which eliminated meat, and wrote that vegetarians would "no longer pine under the lethargy of ennui."'

Livia Gershon at JSTOR Daily.

"Much like many modern vegetarians and vegans, Shelley linked a vegetable-based diet not only to health, but also to ecology and economic justice. He argued that if people ate the products of farm fields themselves rather than inefficiently using them to fatten animals, they could stop 'devouring an acre at a meal' and end 'the long-protracted famine of the hard-working peasant’s hungry babes.'"

See A Defence of Poetry, in Gateway to the Great Books (10 Vol., 1963) volume 5.

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