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Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, or Every Man His Own Allegorist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Newman I. White
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Extract

The respectable number of books and articles about Shelley within recent years have concerned themselves mainly with the review of a puzzling personality and an inspiring, if not altogether acceptable “message.” At one of those times, the aftermath of a centennial, when authors may be assayed anew, we have contented ourselves with reaffirming, somewhat indifferently, the opinions of the last seventy-five years. This fact seems to argue that the poet's reputation has become stabilized. Although scholars and critics will no doubt continue to add minutiae, it is probably true that our main body of information and opinions concerning Shelley is definitely fixed, for some time to come. And yet in the case of Shelley's principal poem, Prometheus Unbound, there are considerations which indicate that the generally accepted view needs to be revised. These considerations hardly affect the value or the essential meaning of the poem, but they do fundamentally affect the method by which it is commonly approached.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 40 , Issue 1: American Bibliography for 1924 , March 1925 , pp. 172 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1925

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References

1 Letter to Peacock; Ingpen, Collected Letters, p. 698.

2 Ingpen, op. cit., pp. 626, 630, 660, 688, 715, 720, 728, 758, 759, 766, 772, 781, 783, 801, 805, 809, 830, 845, 874.

3 Ingpen, op. cit., p. 781.

4 Ingpen, op. cit., p. 809.

5 See her notes on Alastor, Peter Bell the Third, Rosalind and Helen, The Cenci, and Swellfoot the Tyrant, and the comments on some of these notes offered by reviewers in the Athenaeum for Dec. 14, 1839; Tail's Edinburgh Magazine, N. S. 7 (1840): 56-59; and Monthly Review, N.S. 1 (1840): 125-130.

6 Note to The Cenci.

7 See Mrs. Shelley's note; also Shelley's Preface to The Revolt of Islam.

8 Examiner, 1822, pp. 355, 370, 389.

9 Rambler, 176, Nov. 23, 1751.

10 Publications of the Shelley Society, Series I, Part 1.

11 A Study of Shelley.

12 Shelley, in English Men of Letters.

13 Introduction to Prometheus Unbound.

14 A Shelley Primer.

15 Shelley Society Notebook, I, 1, 119 ff.

16 See Richard Ackerman: “Studien über Shelley's Prometheus Unbound,” Englische Studien, XV, 19-39; also Miss Scudder, op. cit.