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Literary Sources of Shelley's The Witch of Atlas

(The following articles have been revised by interchange of material by their respective authors.—Ed.)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Carlos Baker
Affiliation:
Princeton University
David Lee Clark
Affiliation:
University of Texas

Extract

Mary Shelley, in the note she supplied to the poem, properly characterizes The Witch of Atlas as “wildly fanciful, full of brilliant imagery,” and burgeoning with “fantastic ideas.” Rather misleading is her further statement that its source materials were borrowed “from sunrise or sunset, from the yellow moonshine, or paly twilight,” a kind of emotional garner from Shelley's rambles “in the sunny land he so much loved.” For The Witch is as literary a poem in its origins as Shelley ever wrote. It teems with images which suggest Spenser, Milton, and Shakespeare, as well as Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Herodotus, and Pliny. A recent article by Professor Lowes indicates that Keats's Endymion should be added to the list of sources, with what justification Professor Clark's ensuing article makes clear.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1941

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References

Note 1 in page 472 The connection has been observed by Douglas Bush, PQ, xiii (1934), 301. There may be a suggestion of Dante here. See Convito, Trat. iii, 13–15.

Note 2 in page 474 One recalls likewise that as a little boy Spenser's Satyrane “would learne/ The Lyon stoup to him in lowly wise” (FQ i. vi. 25; see also i.vi.27). As Professor Clark and I have independently noticed, Shelley seems to have recalled the description of Diana's chastity, “wherewith she tam'd the brinded lioness” from Milton's Comus (442–443). Professor Lowes, however, cites Endymion iv, 793–794. But see Professor Clark on these stanzas.

Note 3 in page 474 Professor Lowes here points to Endymion iv, 215–217, “And near him rode Silenus on his ass/ Pelted with flowers as he on did pass/ Tipsily quaffing.” One may notice that in Shelley and Spenser the old gentleman, though blithe, is not yet tipsy. Prof. Lowes believes also that Shelley's sentence, “woodgods in a crew/ Came, blithe,” involves a recollection of Endymion iv, 228, 230, “Whence came ye, jolly Satyrs! ... Why have ye left your forest haunts?” Yet Spenser has used the phrase “wyld woodgods,” and notices that these minor deities are “as glad as birdes.”

A further instance of Shelley's eclectic habits with respect to the imagery occurs in Stanza lv, where Spenser and Milton again join hands, this time in the august company of Shakespeare. Most commentators on archaisms in Shelley's diction have pointed to the Spenserian metathesis, crudded. The expression beaked cape follows Milton's beaked promontory (Lycidas, 94), which so struck Shelley that he used it again in a slightly different form (Epipsychidion, 198). As Professor Clark and I have both noticed, line 4, “And like Arion on the dolphin's back,” is taken without change from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (i. ii. 14), with which, as with Macbeth, Lear, and The Tempest, Shelley was extremely familiar. Professor Clark's discussion of the stanza shows that Professor Lowes' allegations of a parallel from Endymion here are at best unlikely.

Note 4 in page 475 Professor Lowes cites Endymion i, 671; ii, 961; iii, 211. Again Spenser is a much better source than Keats. But for further comment on this passage the reader is referred to the contiguous article by Professor Clark.

Note 5 in page 475 Professor Clark argues, and I heartily agree, that in view of Shelley's close knowledge of The Faerie Queene there is no reason to believe that Shelley needed Keats to acquaint him with Archimago, as Professor Lowes implies. It will be noticed, however, that Shelley uses the term Archimage in full consciousness of its etymological formation. Unlike Spenser's villainous personage, Shelley's Archimage belongs to the Saturnian epoch (to Shelleyan myth the original Golden Age), and from his literary works the Witch presumably draws wise counsel on the philosophy of love.

Note 6 in page 476 Shelley's Letters Julian Edition), x, 93. (13 or 14 October, 1819.)

Note 7 in page 476 Douglas Bush, op. cit., observes that the Hermaphroditus of Ovid's Metamorphoses (iv, 368) is said to be the great-grandson of Atlas, a fact which fits neatly into Shelley's genealogy here. Professor Clark calls my attention to the fact that Diodorus, like Ovid, has much to say about the Hermaphrodite. See also K. Koller, “A Source for Portions of The Witch of Atlas,” MLN, lii (1937), 157–161.

Note 8 in page 477 Floyd Stovall, “Shelley's Doctrine of Love,” PMLA xlv (1930), 283–303, was among the first to assert with proper emphasis the centrality of the concept in Shelley's poetry. Shelley's critics have been slow to recognize Spenser's influence in this connection. Besides the cited passages, one may profitably examine Spenser's Hymne in Honour of Love (83–91), and the reference to Love as a “celestiall harmonie” in the Hymne in Honour of Beautie, 197. See further an article by the present writer in Sewanee Review, xlviii (1940), 512–518.

Note 9 in page 478 In his use of certain narrative tricks, and of phrases common in The Faerie Queene, Shelley has paid Spenser the tribute of further emulation. Professor Traugott Böhme, Spensers Literarisches Nachleben bis zu Shelley, Palaestra, xciii (Berlin, 1911), has observed some of them. Spenser employs the phrase “subtle slights” on six occasions, three times at the end of a canto. Shelley uses the same phrase (not to be found in Shakespeare or Milton) at the close of The Witch (lxxviii, 4). Typically Spenserian also is the device of interrupting the narrative with a promise to continue it another time. One may compare The Witch (lxxviii) with Faerie Queene (vi.x.44; vi.v.41.9; vi.x.44.9; and vi.xii.14.2).

A stray line from Spenser (FQ ii.xii.68.1). from a canto which seems to have been one of Shelley's favorites, is “Withall she laughed, and she blusht withall.” Compare Shelley's “And now she wept and now she laughed outright.” (liv, 8).

Evidence that Shelley was thinking of Muiopotmos as well as of Prosopopoia appears from a comparison of the second of Shelley's introductory stanzas with Muiopotmos, 17–22, 41–45. No great modification of Spenser's “silver-winged Flies” is Shelley's “silken-winged fly.” “The sun's dominions” is perhaps another version of Spenser's “Empire of the aire.” In both passages occurs the word “pinions,” while the two lines, “Because it cannot climb the purest sky,” (Shelley), and “To mount aloft into the Christall sky,” (Spenser), appear to be related.

Note 10 in page 479 Keats, Letters, ed. H. Buxton Forman (Oxford, 1931), ii, 553.

Note 1 in page 479 lv: (March 1940), 203–206.

Note 2 in page 479 Julian Edition, x: 80.

Note 3 in page 480 Ibid., x: 194.

Note 4 in page 480 Ibid., x: 211.

Note 5 in page 480 Ibid., x: 217.

Note 6 in page 480 Ibid., x: 218. It is important to note that none of Professor Lowes's citations come from the passages here pointed out by Shelley as truly poetic.

Note 7 in page 480 Ibid., x: 219.

Note 8 in page 480 Ibid., x: 235.

Note 9 in page 481 Ibid., x: 265. The italics are mine.

Note 10 in page 482 Virgil's Gnat, 177–179.

Note 11 in page 482 Herodotus, iii: 140, Rawlinson Ed., and Pliny's Natural History (Book v, Chapters, 1, 4, 8; Book vi, Chap. 35; Book viii, Chap. 2). Katherine Koller points out, in part, the poet's indebtedness to Pliny (MLN, lii, 160–161), but fails to note the close resemblance of the same material in Herodotus, whom, for the most part, Pliny is following.

Note 12 in page 482 Pliny, in the same paragraph, mentions the story from Homer of huge cranes warring on the pygmies. It is interesting to note that Shelley's first draft of those lines included Cranes.

Note 13 in page 482 June, 1820, 1. 106.

Note 14 in page 483 Metamorphoses, Book 10, Fable i; Book 11, Fable iii; Book 14, Fable vi.

Note 15 in page 483 See Douglas Bush's Mythology and the Romantic Tradition, pp. 83–103; also Leonard Brown's “The Genesis, Growth, and Meaning of Endymion.”

Note 16 in page 483 In his description of the Labyrinth at Lake Moeris, ii: 194–198. In March 1937, Katherine Roller (MLN, lii, 158–159) called attention to Shelley's possible indebtedness to this passage.

Note 17 in page 484 Diodorus Siculus, i: 37–87; 143; 297; 303; ii: 51–63, edited by C. H. Oldfather.

Note 18 in page 484 Herodotus, ii: 195–197.

Note 19 in page 484 Complete Works of Rabelais, Bohn edition, ii, 520–529.

Note 20 in page 485 Queen Mab, viii, 124–128.

Note 21 in page 485 Laon and Cythna, 263–297; 2106–15.

Note 22 in page 485 Prometheus Unbound, 3. 3. 6–175.

Note 23 in page 485 Marenghi, 107–116.

Note 24 in page 486 He began it on February 2, finishing it eight days later.

Note 25 in page 486 Messiah, lines 77–84. Note also how closely the words in italics bear upon the imagery in No. 12.

Note 26 in page 486 See letters to Elizabeth Hitchener June 11 and 27, 1811; the poet's Journal records the reading of The Curse of Kehama, Sept. 17, 1814.

Note 27 in page 487 Comus, 420–463.

Note 28 in page 488 Virgil, Davidson's Translation (London, 1855).

Note 29 in page 488 Metamorphoses, Book ii, Fable i.

Note 30 in page 492 Note that Shelley used the last three lines of this poem as a headpiece for Julian and Maddalo (1818).

Note 31 in page 492 Metamorphoses, Book iv, Fable i.

Note 32 in page 492 Faerie Queene, 1. 7. 32. See Professor Baker's article above.

Note 33 in page 494 Pliny's Natural History, Bohn Edition, ii, 244–245. The French naturalist, Cuvier, with whose writings Shelley was familiar, remarks upon the exaggeration in this passage in Pliny.