Shelley S Visual Imagination

First full-length study of Shelley's remarkable notebooks and the visual and textual imagination they reveal.

"Shelley's drafts and notebooks, which have recently been published for the first time, are very revealing about the creative processes behind his poems, and show - through illustrations and doodles - an unexpectedly vivid visual imagination which contributed greatly to the effect of his poetry. Shelley's Visual Imagination analyzes both verbal script and visual sketches in his manuscripts to interpret the lively personifications of concepts such as 'Liberty', 'Anarchy', or 'Life' in his completed poems. Challenging the persistent assumption that Shelley's poetry in particular, and Romantic poetry more generally, reject the visual for expressive voice or music, this first full-length study of the drafts and notebooks combines criticism with a focus upon bibliographic codes and iconic pages. The product of years of close examination of these remarkable texts, this much-anticipated book will be of great value for all students of Shelley and all those interested in the Romantic process of creation"--

Shelley's drafts and notebooks, which have recently been published for the first time, are very revealing about the creative processes behind his poems, and show - through illustrations and doodles - an unexpectedly vivid visual imagination which contributed greatly to the effect of his poetry. Shelley's Visual Imagination analyzes both verbal script and visual sketches in his manuscripts to interpret the lively personifications of concepts such as 'Liberty', 'Anarchy', or 'Life' in his completed poems. Challenging the persistent assumption that Shelley's poetry in particular, and Romantic poetry more generally, reject the visual for expressive voice or music, this first full-length study of the drafts and notebooks combines criticism with a focus upon bibliographic codes and iconic pages. The product of years of close examination of these remarkable texts, this much-anticipated book will be of great value for all students of Shelley and all those interested in the Romantic process of creation.

Significant study of colonial Caribbean literatures in the context of the high rates of disease and death in the region.

The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley takes stock of current developments in the study of a major Romantic poet and prose-writer, and seeks to advance Shelley studies beyond the current scholarship. It consists of forty-two chapters written by a prestigious international cast of established and emerging scholar-critics, and offers the most wide-ranging single-volume body of writings on Shelley. The volume builds on the textual revolution in Shelley studies, which has transformed understanding of the poet, as critics are able to focus on what Shelley actually wrote. This Handbook is divided into five thematic sections: Biography and Relationships; Prose; Poetry; Cultures, Traditions, Influences; and Afterlives. The first section reappraises Shelley's life and relationships, including those with his publishers through whom he sought to reach an audience for the 'Ashes and sparks' of his thought, and with women, creative collaborators as well as muse-figures; the second section gives his under-investigated prose works detailed attention, bringing multiple perspectives to bear on his shifting and complex conceptual positions, and demonstrating out the range of his achievement in prose works from novels to political and poetic treatises; the third section explores Shelley's creativity and gift as a poet, emphasizing his capacity to excel in many different poetic genres; the fourth section looks at Shelley's response to past and present literary cultures, both English and international, and at his immersion in science, music, theatre, the visual arts, and tourism and travel; the fifth section concludes the volume by analysing Shelley's literary and cultural afterlife, from his influence on Victorians and Moderns, to his status as the exemplary poet for Deconstruction. The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley brings out the relevance to Shelley's own work of his dictum that 'All high poetry is infinite' and continues to generate original critical responses.

First published 1984. In a provocative study, this book argues that the problems posed by Shelley’s notoriously difficult style must be understood in relation to his ambivalence towards language itself as an artistic medium — the tension between the potential of language to mirror emotional experience and the recognition of it’s inevitable limitations. Through an exposition of Shelley’s idea of language, as reflected in his theoretical writings and individual poems, this book makes a strong case for his artistic worth. A definitive introduction to Shelley, useful for both scholars and newcomers, this book will be interest to students of literature.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was one of the major Romantic poets, and wrote what is critically recognised as some of the finest lyric poetry in the English language. This is the fourth volume of the five-volume The Poems of Shelley, which presents all of Shelley’s poems in chronological order and with full annotation. Date and circumstances of composition are provided for each poem and all manuscript and printed sources relevant to establishing an authoritative text are freshly examined and assessed. Headnotes and footnotes furnish the personal, literary, historical and scientific information necessary to an informed reading of Shelley’s varied and allusive verse. Most of the poems in the present volume were written between late autumn 1820 and late summer 1821. They include Adonais, Shelley’s lament on the death of John Keats, widely recognised as one of the finest elegies in English poetry, as well as Epipsychidion, a poem inspired by his relationship with the nineteen-year-old Teresa Viviani (‘Emilia’), the object of an intense but temporary fascination for Shelley. The poems of this period show the extent both of Shelley’s engagement with Keats’s volume Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems (1820) — a copy of which he first read in October 1820 — and of his interest in Italian history, culture and politics. Shelley’s translations of some of his own poems into Italian and his original compositions in the language are also included here. In addition to accompanying commentaries, there are extensive bibliographies to the poems, a chronological table of Shelley’s life and publications, and indexes to titles and first lines. The volumes of The Poems of Shelley form the most comprehensive edition of Shelley’s poetry available to students and scholars.

This book establishes Percy Bysshe Shelley's view of poetry as 'living melody' and sets it within the wider context of Romantic-era thought.