Full Description
This book provides the first modern, in-depth analysis of Percy Bysshe Shelley's engagement with the phenomenon of death. It argues that, for Shelley, this most nebulous of realities represents, first and foremost, possibility: Shelley's poetic writings on death are both numerous and varied, presenting his reader, with differing degrees of confidence over the course of his brief but brilliant career, with several key visions of what death might be or actually is. Shelley's Visions of Death stresses the seldom-appreciated fact that death was one of Shelley's most enduring preoccupations, and also demonstrates the poet's power to imagine, with startling variety, that which lies beyond the boundaries of experience.
Contents
Chapter 1: 'While Yet a Boy I Sought for Ghosts': Contexts.- Chapter 2: 'Rending the Veil of Mortal Frailty': Queen Mab (1813).- Chapter 3: 'Who Lifteth the Veil of What is to Come?': Alastor (1816).- Chapter 4: 'And is This Death?': 'Seeing' the Unseen, and Visionary Experimentation (1816-20).- Chapter 5: 'Where the Eternal Are': Adonais (1821).- Chapter 6: Shadows and Dreams: Conclusions.
