Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x24gv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-06T14:37:44.385Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - Action at a Distance

Communication and Material Entanglement in Queen Mab and The Mask of Anarchy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2024

Omar F. Miranda
Affiliation:
University of San Francisco
Kate Singer
Affiliation:
Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

This chapter investigates Shelley’s fascination with issues of communication, especially his engagement with concepts of action at a distance, “the action of one object on another regardless of the presence or absence of an intervening medium” (Oxford English Dictionary). Shelley’s attempts to overcome distances of space and time were a feature of his correspondence, especially during his years in Italy. Action at a distance also informs his representation of a materialized physical universe in early works like Queen Mab (1813) and provides a foundation for his later accounts of political communication in The Mask of Anarchy (1819). I suggest that Shelley’s account of unmediated action at a distance coalesces with more recent treatments of matter and mediation in quantum physics and especially in Karen Barad’s account of material entanglements in which “matter [is] a dynamic and shifting entanglement of relations, rather than a property of things.” Shelley’s poetry itself functions as a form of Baradian apparatus with the facility to offer “agential cuts,” providing moments of insight within intra-active material systems. In these poems, Shelley presents the universe as one continuous material system, which enables unmediated communication across any distance, and which at times of political crisis enables instantaneous solidarity and resistance.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×