Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime

A major new study of Percy Shelley's intellectual life and poetic career.

Cian Duffy (Author)

9780521111836, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 11 June 2009

280 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.41 kg

'… [a] scrupulously argued and impressively researched monograph.' Bars Bulletin & Review

A major new study of Percy Shelley's intellectual life and poetic career, Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime identifies Shelley's fascination with sublime natural phenomena as a key element in his understanding of the way ideas like 'nature' and 'imagination' informed the social and political structures of the Romantic period. Offering a genuinely fresh set of perspectives on Shelley's texts and contexts, Cian Duffy argues that Shelley's engagement with the British and French discourse on the sublime had a profound influence on his writing about political change in that age of revolutionary crisis. Examining Shelley's extensive use of sublime imagery and metaphor, Duffy offers not only a substantial reassessment of Shelley's work but also a significant re-appraisal of the role of the sublime in the cultural history of Britain during the Romantic period.

Introduction: approaching the Shelleyan sublime
1. From religion to revolution, 1810–13
2. Cultivating the imagination, 1813–15
3. Mont Blanc and the Alps, 1816
4. Writing the revolution: Laon and Cynthia, 1817–23
5. 'Choose reform or civil war', 1818–19
Conclusion: 'Good and the means of good', 1822
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]