The Unfamiliar Shelley

Description

Stimulated by new editions of Shelley's writings and the evidence of notebooks, the editors have assembled an outstanding group of international Shelley scholars to work through the implications of recent advances in scholarship. With particular attention to texts that have been neglected or underestimated, the contributors consider many important aspects of Shelley's prolific and remarkably diverse output, including the verse letter, plays, prose essays, satire, pamphlets, political verse, romance, prefaces, translations from the Greek, prose style, artistic representations, fragments and early writings. Revaluations of Shelley's youthful works, often criticized for their over-exuberance, pay dividends as they reveal Shelley's early maturation as a writer and also shed light on his later achievement. Taken as a whole, the collection makes evident that Shelley's reputation has been based largely on surprisingly imperfect and incomplete edited publications, driven by Victorian taste and culture. A writer very different from the one we thought we knew emerges from these essays, which are sure to inspire more reappraisals of Shelley's work. Cover Half Title Dedication Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents General Editors’ Preface List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Editorial Note Introduction Poetry 1 Reading as Flight: Fragment Poems from Shelley’s Notebooks 2 ‘The Casket of My Unknown Mind’: The 1813 Volume of Minor Poems 3 Happily Ever After? The Necessity of Fairytale in Queen Mab 4 Laon and the Hermit: Connection and Succession 5 ‘Peter Bell the Third’: Contempt and Poetic Transfiguration 6 Scratching at the Door of Absence: Writing and Reading ‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’ 7 Shelley’s Neapolitan-Tuscan Poetics: ‘Sonnet: Political Greatness’ and the ‘Republic’ of Benevento Art 8 Shelleyan Inspiration and the Sister Arts Prose 9 Noises On: The Communicative Strategies of Shelley’s Prefaces 10 Contemplating Facts, Studying Ourselves: Aspects of Shelley’s Philosophical and Religious Prose 11 A Place to Stand: Questions of Address in Shelley’s Political Pamphlets 12 Emulating Plato: Shelley as Translator and Prose Poet 13 ‘These Catchers of Men’: Imposture and Its Unmasking in ‘A Philosophical View of Reform’ Drama 14 Porcine Poetics: Shelley’s Swellfoot the Tyrant 15 Shelley’s Late Fragmentary Plays: ‘Charles the First’ and the ‘Unfinished Drama’ Afterword: Tracking Shelley Bibliography Index