Shelley's Poetry: The Divided Self

287 Pages·1997·13.488 MB·English

by  Simon Haines

Shelley's Poetry
The Divided Self
Simon Haines
SHELLEY'S POETRY: THE DIVIDED SELF
This page intentionally left blank
Shelley's Poetry
The Divided Self
Simon Haines
Department of English
Australian National University, Canberra
tt
m
First published in Great Britain 1997 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-333-59707-9
m First published in the United States of America 1997 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN0-312-16551-X
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haines, Simon, 1955-
Shelley's Poetry : the divided self/ Simon Haines.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-312-16551-X (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822—Criticism and interpretation.
2. Emotions in literature. 3. Reason in literature. 4. Self in
literature. I. Title.
PR5438.H33 1997
821 '.7—dc20 96-27679
CIP
©Simon Haines 1997
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with
written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by
the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author have asserted his rights to be identified as the author of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire
For Jane, Catherine and William
and
for my mother and father
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface ix
Chapter 1 The Case of Shelley
Introduction 1
"Cobwebs of the brain": the case against 6
The nineteenth century 6
The twentieth century 22
Symbolising the truth: the case for 31
Referential defences 31
Symbolist and stylist defences 37
Poetry: thinking about lives or thinking
about Life? 47
Chapter 2 Shelley's Views of Poetry
Introduction 56
Shelley in England, 1811-17 58
Shelley in Italy, 1818-19 71
Shelley in Italy, 1820-2 84
Conclusion 94
Chapter 3 Shelley's Poetry, 1811-17
General Introduction: Chapters 3-6 96
Queen Mab 97
Alastor 107
"Mont Blanc" and other poems 118
Chapter 4 Shelley's Poetry, 1818-20
"Julian and Maddalo" and other poems 127
"Ode to the West Wind" and other poems 146
Chapter 5 Shelley's Poetry, 1818-20 (continued)
Prometheus Unbound 163
General remarks 163
Act I 168
Vll
viii Contents
Act II 179
Acts III and IV 187
Chapter 6 Shelley's Poetry, 1821-2
Epipsychidion 194
Adonais 207
"The Triumph of Life" 219
Conclusion The Divided Self 240
Notes 247
Bibliography 257
Index 270
Preface
How many critical books on Shelley or any poet are read nowa
days by people who are neither teachers nor students in a uni
versity? Why write yet another such book for a small and sated
coterie? Why, even worse, write one questioning the reputation
of a poet supposedly still recuperating from a savage critical assault
more than fifty years ago?
This book is intended to encourage general readers as well as
university teachers and students to think about poetry as itself,
and for themselves. Too much contemporary writing about po
etry assumes that it has to be explained chiefly in terms of some
other thing: in Shelley's case, of the poet's life, of British and
European politics from the 1780s to the 1820s, of scepticism or
Platonism, of theory of language or mind, and so on. Poetry in
this light looks like an oddly shaped container for ideas about
these subjects. At best its task may be to find what might be
termed "thin" symbols for a finally unrepresentable Truth or Idea.
The poet, in this case Shelley, appears as a political radical, a
cad, a metaphysician, a mystic, a systematic philosopher, a theorist
of something or other: rarely as a poet. Readers are to think of
themselves as theorised, contextualised or otherwise dissolved
into some greater reality. But poetry may also be represented as
a distinctive manner of thinking, a kind of human perception
that resists dissolution into philosophical or historical catego
ries. Nor need one necessarily find the poetry in question ap
pealing in order to represent it in this way. Indeed a predominantly
(but not entirely) disapprobatory criticism of such an influential
and admired poet may be particularly effective in encouraging
such a way of seeing poetry, as well as salutary in helping to
discover a certain style of mind widespread in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, and also in our own times.
When I embarked with great enthusiasm on a study of Shelley's
poetry many years ago I soon found the few adverse criticisms
of him, especially those by Hazlitt, more telling than the many
appreciations; I still do. This book attempts to explain why. I
hope Shelley's admirers will not dismiss it out of hand as merely
IX