Shelley's Visual Imagination

by Goslee, Nancy Moore

• ISBN13: 9781107008380
• ISBN10: 1107008387
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-08-15
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

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 in a major way 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 study combines criticism with a focus upon bibliographic codes and iconic pages. The product of years of study, this much-anticipated book will be of great value for all students of Shelley.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. viii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: text and figure	p. 1
Mab's metamorphoses	p. 28
''Hymn to Intellectual Beauty": visual texts, invisible figure	p. 49
"Clear elemental shapes": communicating Greek liberty in Laon and Cythna	p. 68
Anarchy s textual progress: representing liberty	p. 95
Refiguring genre in Shelley's "Ode to Liberty"	p. 123
Dispersoning Emily: drafting as plot in Epipsychidion	p. 140
"Compelling / All new successions": death and die poet's figurations in Adonais	p. 159
The Triumph of Life: figure, history, and inscription	p. 186
Notes	p. 218
Bibliography	p. 250
Index	p. 268
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