Reading the elements of the romantic psyche in Percy Shelley’s The Witch of Atlas
Tarih
2019
Yazarlar
Aktar, Merve
Dergi Başlığı
Dergi ISSN
Cilt Başlığı
Yayıncı
North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR)
Erişim Hakkı
info:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess
Özet
Imagination, as in Coleridge’s mystical-philosophical “eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM” 1 , is a primary element of Romantic poetry, whose material substance is, I claim, the Spenserian romance form. They combine to form a composite, the Romantic psyche, that I close read in Percy Shelley’s The Witch of Atlas. This choice rests on Shelley’s representative position among his peers for having written the most fanciful poem that methodologizes this “esemplastic” 2 element. The titular Witch and her creation, the Hermaphrodite, allude to the story of False Florimell’s creation in Book III of The Faery Queene; yet, Shelley literalizes the metaphor of the “Imagination … (as) heady romance--an inspiring force, a dangerous seduction,” 3 but provocatively overturns its negative connotations. I read the Witch as spirit and the Hermaphrodite as her imagination, through which “She did unite [friends torn apart] again with visions clear/Of deep affection and of truth sincere” (LXXVII, 663-4). I illustrate how the “dilation” 4 of the romance mode of the poem, that contains no forward thrust and no conclusion, supports Shelley’s conceptualization of the Romantic psyche as made of the elements that in a very Blakean sense “unite again with visions clear” the hitherto fragmentary, conflicting meanings available through reason. Patricia Parker’s concept principally guides my close reading, and the leads me, and, I hope my listeners, to trace how the frustrations of “unawakened eyes” (XL, 361-68) is essential to the recovery of lost vision— the totality of experience.
Açıklama
Anahtar Kelimeler
Shelley, Spenserian, Romance, Witch of Atlas, Psyche
Kaynak
27th Annual Conference Romantic Elements, 8-11 August 2019
WoS Q Değeri
Scopus Q Değeri
Cilt
Sayı
Künye
Aktar, M. (2019). Reading the elements of the romantic psyche in Percy Shelley’s The Witch of Atlas. 27th Annual Conference Romantic Elements, Chicago, USA, 8-11 August 2019.
