Trees shift between visual, literal, and rhetorical figures in Shelley’s poetry, where distinctive tree species accentuate particular qualities of verse. Attentive to the final year of Shelley’s life, this essay explores the treescapes of the poet’s ultimate work, ‘The Triumph of Life’, and the pine’s suspension of time in Shelley’s last lyrics to Jane Williams: ‘To Jane. The Invitation’, ‘To Jane–The Recollection’, and ‘With a Guitar. To Jane’. The pines that populate the Jane Poems are complicit in the arrestation of the lyrical moment, embalming poetic speaker and subject in deathly amber. In ‘The Triumph of Life’, broadleaved species – the chestnut and the poplar – regenerate the fallen leaves of the ‘Ode to the West Wind’ by sowing the seeds of posterity. Rooted in a tradition of arboreal poetics from the classical world to the contemporary, Shelley’s trees construct an allusive network of intertextual echoes.
{"title":"‘—and so this tree— / O that such our death may be—’: Shelley’s Last Treescapes","authors":"Amanda Blake Davis","doi":"10.3366/rom.2024.0628","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2024.0628","url":null,"abstract":"Trees shift between visual, literal, and rhetorical figures in Shelley’s poetry, where distinctive tree species accentuate particular qualities of verse. Attentive to the final year of Shelley’s life, this essay explores the treescapes of the poet’s ultimate work, ‘The Triumph of Life’, and the pine’s suspension of time in Shelley’s last lyrics to Jane Williams: ‘To Jane. The Invitation’, ‘To Jane–The Recollection’, and ‘With a Guitar. To Jane’. The pines that populate the Jane Poems are complicit in the arrestation of the lyrical moment, embalming poetic speaker and subject in deathly amber. In ‘The Triumph of Life’, broadleaved species – the chestnut and the poplar – regenerate the fallen leaves of the ‘Ode to the West Wind’ by sowing the seeds of posterity. Rooted in a tradition of arboreal poetics from the classical world to the contemporary, Shelley’s trees construct an allusive network of intertextual echoes.","PeriodicalId":42939,"journal":{"name":"Romanticism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140357575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"R. S. White, Keats's Anatomy of Melancholy: Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes and Other Poems (1820)","authors":"Matthew Ward","doi":"10.3366/rom.2024.0635","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2024.0635","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42939,"journal":{"name":"Romanticism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140355014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: The 2022 Shelley Conference","authors":"Amanda Blake Davis, Anna Mercer","doi":"10.3366/rom.2024.0623","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2024.0623","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42939,"journal":{"name":"Romanticism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140356018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lucy Cogan, Blake and the Failure of Prophecy","authors":"Jude Mahmoud","doi":"10.3366/rom.2024.0633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2024.0633","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42939,"journal":{"name":"Romanticism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140352988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kerri Andrews, Wanderers: A History of Women Walking","authors":"Pamela Buck","doi":"10.3366/rom.2024.0631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2024.0631","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42939,"journal":{"name":"Romanticism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140354379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Among the Abinger Papers in the Bodleian Library is a document, MS. Abinger c. 73, fols. 99–104, the testimony of one William Tyler, a draper’s assistant from Marlow, Buckinghamshire who wrote poems and saw the Shelleys plain. Jane, Lady Shelley (the wife of the Shelleys’ only surviving son, Sir Percy Florence) gathered as many reminiscences of her father-in-law as she could. Tyler’s is by far the longest. (Appended to this essay is a transcription of his testimony reproduced in full for the first time). Tyler has been virtually erased from the literary and biographical records of the Shelleys, save for one footnote. Edward Dowden made use of his testimony for The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1886), but whilst some of Tyler’s words are artfully deployed to bolster the memories of another, others are cut from the record altogether. This essay tells the remarkable story of Tyler, a man unknown to fame, who deserves to be remembered. For one, he provides the only surviving verbatim record of the contents of a journal kept by Mary Shelley which covered the events of May 1815 to June 1816. Who was William Tyler and how did he come to turn those lost pages?
{"title":"The Draper’s Assistant and Mary Shelley’s Lost Journal","authors":"Bysshe Inigo Coffey","doi":"10.3366/rom.2024.0625","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2024.0625","url":null,"abstract":"Among the Abinger Papers in the Bodleian Library is a document, MS. Abinger c. 73, fols. 99–104, the testimony of one William Tyler, a draper’s assistant from Marlow, Buckinghamshire who wrote poems and saw the Shelleys plain. Jane, Lady Shelley (the wife of the Shelleys’ only surviving son, Sir Percy Florence) gathered as many reminiscences of her father-in-law as she could. Tyler’s is by far the longest. (Appended to this essay is a transcription of his testimony reproduced in full for the first time). Tyler has been virtually erased from the literary and biographical records of the Shelleys, save for one footnote. Edward Dowden made use of his testimony for The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1886), but whilst some of Tyler’s words are artfully deployed to bolster the memories of another, others are cut from the record altogether. This essay tells the remarkable story of Tyler, a man unknown to fame, who deserves to be remembered. For one, he provides the only surviving verbatim record of the contents of a journal kept by Mary Shelley which covered the events of May 1815 to June 1816. Who was William Tyler and how did he come to turn those lost pages?","PeriodicalId":42939,"journal":{"name":"Romanticism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140355432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay approaches the familiar subject of memory in Shelley through examining his exceptional gift for retentive memorization, a gift not unique to him, but also conspicuously possessed by Byron. A few instances, mostly taken from the Shelley circle and the poet Henry Kirke White, demonstrate the encouragement given to the development of a retentive memory during the Romantic period, and the admiration that it attracted, but also the apprehensiveness lest it become an end in itself. Examples follow of memory feats performed by Byron and Shelley independently and interactively, focusing on the effect upon Shelley’s political poetry of 1819 of hearing Byron read the early part of Don Juan to him in the autumn of 1818, including portions that Shelley could not have reread in the interval. The question arises: did Shelley worry that his memory was a burden, tempting him into unwitting plagiarism? His draft revisions indicate that he sometimes might have done.
这篇文章通过研究雪莱的超强记忆力,探讨了人们所熟悉的雪莱的记忆力这一话题,雪莱的记忆力并非他独有,拜伦也明显具有这种天赋。文章从雪莱圈子和诗人亨利-柯克-怀特(Henry Kirke White)身上摘录的一些事例,表明了浪漫主义时期对发展持久记忆力的鼓励,以及对这一天赋的钦佩,同时也是对这一天赋本身成为目的的担忧。接下来是拜伦和雪莱独立和互动地进行记忆的例子,重点是雪莱在 1818 年秋天听到拜伦为他朗读《唐璜》的前半部分,包括雪莱在此期间不可能重读的部分,这对他 1819 年政治诗歌的影响。这就产生了一个问题:雪莱是否担心自己的记忆会成为一种负担,诱使他在不知情的情况下进行剽窃?他的修订稿表明,他有时可能会这样做。
{"title":"Shelley and the Retentive Memory","authors":"Nora Crook","doi":"10.3366/rom.2024.0624","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2024.0624","url":null,"abstract":"This essay approaches the familiar subject of memory in Shelley through examining his exceptional gift for retentive memorization, a gift not unique to him, but also conspicuously possessed by Byron. A few instances, mostly taken from the Shelley circle and the poet Henry Kirke White, demonstrate the encouragement given to the development of a retentive memory during the Romantic period, and the admiration that it attracted, but also the apprehensiveness lest it become an end in itself. Examples follow of memory feats performed by Byron and Shelley independently and interactively, focusing on the effect upon Shelley’s political poetry of 1819 of hearing Byron read the early part of Don Juan to him in the autumn of 1818, including portions that Shelley could not have reread in the interval. The question arises: did Shelley worry that his memory was a burden, tempting him into unwitting plagiarism? His draft revisions indicate that he sometimes might have done.","PeriodicalId":42939,"journal":{"name":"Romanticism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140355918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jason Whittaker, Jerusalem: Blake, Parry, and the Fight for Englishness","authors":"Rebecca Marks","doi":"10.3366/rom.2024.0636","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2024.0636","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42939,"journal":{"name":"Romanticism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140356545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Early in his career the astronomer William Herschel argued that the appearance of ‘so many changes among the stars’ – stars materialising out of nowhere and stars gradually vanishing, stars fluctuating in brightness and stars changing position – ‘should cause a strong suspicion that most probably every star in the heaven is more or less in motion’. Given his knowledge of modern astronomy, Keats's plea to be as ‘stedfast’ as the bright star might be considered deliberately retrograde: the aesthetic privileging of an ideal by a sky-gazing lover indifferent to empirical science. This essay argues, on the contrary, that the ‘Bright star’ sonnet seizes upon a figurative paradox produced in a period of epistemological transition. The indeterminacy of the bright star image introduces an affective dimension to the sonnet more in keeping with its Petrarchan roots and captures an essential quality of even steadfast lovers: changeability.
{"title":"Celestial Variability and Keats's ‘Bright star’","authors":"Meegan Hasted","doi":"10.3366/rom.2023.0611","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2023.0611","url":null,"abstract":"Early in his career the astronomer William Herschel argued that the appearance of ‘so many changes among the stars’ – stars materialising out of nowhere and stars gradually vanishing, stars fluctuating in brightness and stars changing position – ‘should cause a strong suspicion that most probably every star in the heaven is more or less in motion’. Given his knowledge of modern astronomy, Keats's plea to be as ‘stedfast’ as the bright star might be considered deliberately retrograde: the aesthetic privileging of an ideal by a sky-gazing lover indifferent to empirical science. This essay argues, on the contrary, that the ‘Bright star’ sonnet seizes upon a figurative paradox produced in a period of epistemological transition. The indeterminacy of the bright star image introduces an affective dimension to the sonnet more in keeping with its Petrarchan roots and captures an essential quality of even steadfast lovers: changeability.","PeriodicalId":42939,"journal":{"name":"Romanticism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136094848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Charles Lloyd remains on the fringe of Romanticism, remembered for his relationships with Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, De Quincey and Hays, and known chiefly for his novel Edmund Oliver (1798). This essay investigates the complex history and meanings of Lloyd’s other, entirely neglected novel, Isabel, A Tale. Using unpublished correspondence the essay establishes that, although published in 1820, Isabel was printed in 1810, and written in 1798–99. Two manuscripts of the novel have been located. These are for the first time analysed to shed light on Lloyd’s intentions. Intriguingly, the manuscripts give the novel the sub-title ‘Godwin versus Godwin’, as well as positioning it as a response to Mary Wollstonecraft. These clues, with an unpublished preface, support a reading of Isabel as an attempt to use Wollstonecraft’s work, and her life as written by William Godwin, to develop a modus vivendi allowing radical social critique to co-exist with a defence of chastity and marriage.
{"title":"‘Godwin versus Godwin’: Negotiating the War of Ideas in Charles Lloyd’s <i>Isabel, A Tale</i>","authors":"M. O. Grenby","doi":"10.3366/rom.2023.0610","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2023.0610","url":null,"abstract":"Charles Lloyd remains on the fringe of Romanticism, remembered for his relationships with Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, De Quincey and Hays, and known chiefly for his novel Edmund Oliver (1798). This essay investigates the complex history and meanings of Lloyd’s other, entirely neglected novel, Isabel, A Tale. Using unpublished correspondence the essay establishes that, although published in 1820, Isabel was printed in 1810, and written in 1798–99. Two manuscripts of the novel have been located. These are for the first time analysed to shed light on Lloyd’s intentions. Intriguingly, the manuscripts give the novel the sub-title ‘Godwin versus Godwin’, as well as positioning it as a response to Mary Wollstonecraft. These clues, with an unpublished preface, support a reading of Isabel as an attempt to use Wollstonecraft’s work, and her life as written by William Godwin, to develop a modus vivendi allowing radical social critique to co-exist with a defence of chastity and marriage.","PeriodicalId":42939,"journal":{"name":"Romanticism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136094536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}