Shelleyan Reimaginings and Influence: New Relations

This book explores Percy Bysshe Shelley's involvement in dialogue and influence, highlighting his recognition of poetic individuality as the reward of connectedness with other writers and cultural influences. It examines his response to representative texts, figures, and themes from the classical world, Renaissance poetry, Christianity, and his immediate predecessors and contemporaries. The third section considers Shelley's reception by later nineteenth-century writers, and a coda discusses the critical work on Shelley produced by A. C. Bradley.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: 06 July 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Through meticulous close readings, this volume showcases the imaginative and formal brilliance of Percy Bysshe Shelley's writing, delving into his involvement in processes of dialogue and influence. Shelley understands that poetic individuality is the reward of connecting with other writers and cultural influences. In his profound words, he asserts that a great poem is a fountain forever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight, and each person and age, after exhausting its divine effluence through their unique relations, allows for the emergence of new connections, yielding unforeseen and unparalleled delight. Shelley's profound insights place him among the prominent Romantic poetic exponents and theorists of influence. His unwavering commitment to the dissemination of ideas and feelings, coupled with his recognition of the unpredictable ways in which poets position themselves and are culturally positioned between past and future, sets him apart.

The book is structured in three distinct parts. The first three chapters aim to shed light on Shelley's response to representative texts, figures, and themes that form the foundational pillars of his cultural inheritance: the classical world (Plato), Renaissance poetry (Spenser and Milton), and Christianity, particularly the concept of deity and the Bible. The second and central section delves into Shelley's relationships and affinities with his immediate predecessors and contemporaries, including Hazlitt and Lamb, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Byron, Keats (including the influence of Dante on Shelley's elegy for his fellow Romantic), and the renowned painter J. M. W. Turner, with whom he is often associated. The third section examines Shelley's reception by later nineteenth-century writers, figures, and movements.

Through these comprehensive chapters, the book offers a deep exploration of Shelley's literary and cultural legacy, shedding light on his intricate relationships, his contributions to Romanticism, and his enduring influence on the world of poetry and beyond.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780198884255