Political Economy in the Prose of Percy Bysshe Shelley
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“Poetry [...] concealed by [...] facts and calculating processes”: political economy in the prose of Percy Bysshe Shelley Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Leanne Stokoe School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics Newcastle University November 2012 i Abstract This thesis focuses exclusively on Shelley’s prose works. Firstly, it asks why few of those critics who admire Shelley’s poetry have analysed his prose in detail. Secondly, it explores Shelley’s engagement with political economy, with a view to questioning assumptions that he was hostile towards this discipline. Such a reading is indebted to the work of Connell (2001) and Bronk (2009), who argued that Malthusian and Benthamite doctrines may be aligned with literary concerns. However, my thesis extends these arguments by suggesting that Shelley refused to separate economic and aesthetic categories. Chapter One focuses upon Shelley’s early economic interests, culminating in a reading of his Notes to Queen Mab. These include Smith’s moral philosophy and Spence’s use of poetry to promote agrarian ideas. Such influences inspired Shelley to explore not only contemporary economic theories, but also the way that these were expressed. Chapter Two, which addresses Shelley’s essays on vegetarianism and political reform, discusses his interest in the ways in which metropolitan reformers like Hunt addressed economic issues in aesthetic language, whilst provincial writers like Cobbett incorporated poetry into their criticism of contemporary hardship. This affinity between political economy and literature can be seen as influencing a term that Shelley introduces in his major essays: – ‘Poetry’. Chapter Three, on A Philosophical View of Reform, explores how Shelley defines this capitalised word as encompassing all enlightening disciplines, not simply a literary genre. Chapter Four culminates in an analysis of Shelley’s treatment of utilitarianism in A Defence of Poetry. By engaging with the theories of Mill and Ricardo, it shows that Shelley saw political economy as containing qualities that were ‘concealed’, yet could be revealed within its ‘calculating processes’. Through exploring the way that political economy thus shaped, and was shaped by, his definition of ‘Poetry’, I present Shelley as a distinctive contributor to nineteenth-century economic thought. ii Acknowledgements I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding my PhD, and enabling me to fulfil my research on Shelley. I also acknowledge the financial support of the British Association for Romantic Studies, whose Stephen Copley Award scheme allowed me to undertake archive research in the British Library and University College London. BARS also generously funded my travelling expenses to Glasgow University, where I presented at their international conference. I am also grateful to the School of English, Newcastle University, for funding my research visit to the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. I would like to thank above all my supervisor, Dr. Michael Rossington, who has continually offered support and inspiration throughout my postgraduate studies, and who encouraged my ideas on Shelley and political economy from their inception. I also thank my secondary supervisors: Dr. Ella Dzelzainis for her advice on the wide-ranging implications of nineteenth-century economic thought, and Dr. Kate Davies who first introduced me to Adam Smith’s writings. I am grateful to Professor Claire Lamont for her support for my research and professional development, and to Professor Kate Chedgzoy for her feedback in the drafting stages of this project. I would like to thank my examiners, Professor Sharon Ruston and Dr. Sarah Haggarty, for their interest in this project and its potential. I also thank Dr. Michael Quinn at University College London for granting me access to Jeremy Bentham’s manuscripts and notebooks, and Dr. Bruce Barker-Benfield at the Bodleian Library for granting me permission to undertake research on Shelley’s intermediate draft of A Defence of Poetry. I am very grateful to staff at the Literary and Philosophical Society and Tyne and Wear Archives, Newcastle upon Tyne, and in the Special Collections department of Newcastle University’s Robinson Library. I also thank staff at Durham University Library, UCL Special Collections and the British Library for all their help. I am grateful to Dr. Katie Harland for her meticulous reading of this thesis, as well as to Dr. Hazel Sheeky for her feedback and interest in my research. I would also like to thank Lucy Andrew, whose support and comments on my work have been invaluable. Finally, I thank my parents, Les and Susan Stokoe, for their continual support, love and guidance during the drafting of this project. I also acknowledge all my family and friends who have appreciated the significant part that Shelley has played in my life over the past five years. iii Contents Abstract...........................................................................................................................i. Acknowledgements........................................................................................................ii. Contents.........................................................................................................................iii. List of Abbreviations...................................................................................................viii. Introduction 0. 1. ‘A more general view of Poetry’: Defining Shelley’s Economic Outlook and his Identity as a Prose Writer.................................................................................................1. 0. 2. ‘A Beneficial Conjunction’?: Political Economy and Historical Movements.......................................................................................................................4. 0. 3. Shelley and a ‘Romantic’ Political Economy..........................................................9. Chapter One: Political Economy, Radical Agrarianism and Shelley’s Style in the Notes to Queen Mab 1. 1. ‘Why is it Visionary, have you tried?’: Shelley’s Early Economic Interests...........................................................................................................................16. 1. 2. ‘Bettering the Condition of Humankind’: Shelley in Ireland and Wales..............................................................................................................................23. 1. 3. ‘A Commerce of Good Words and Works’: Shelley and Political Economy in the Notes to Queen Mab.......................................................................................................31. iv 1. 4. ‘Uniform, Constant, and Uninterrupted Efforts’: Shelley and Adam Smith..............................................................................................................................33. 1. 5. ‘Seen By All Who Understand Arithmetic’: Shelley and Classical Political Economy........................................................................................................................36. 1. 6. Shelley, Thomas Spence and ‘The People’s Farm’...............................................41. 1. 7. ‘Working for Themselves’: Shelley and the Agrarian Movement........................47. 1. 8. ‘Enlisting Imagination Under the Banner of Science’: Shelley, Political Economy, and Literary Form.........................................................................................50. 1. 9. ‘Wilder than the Wildest’: Erasmus Darwin, Science and Literature...................52. 1. 10. ‘Subconscious Borrowing’: Shelley, Darwin and the Notes to Queen Mab.................................................................................................................................59. 1. 11. The Legacy of Queen Mab and its Notes............................................................63. Chapter Two: Political Economy, Literary Form and Social Reform in Shelley’s Prose between 1813 and 1817 2. 1. The ‘Peculiar Mode’ of Passion: Shelley, Political Economy and Literary Form...............................................................................................................................68. 2. 2. ‘We are all Subject to Strong Prejudices and Passions’: Shelley and John Frank Newton...........................................................................................................................72. 2. 3. ‘Whether such Qualities be Natural or Not’: Shelley and Joseph Ritson.............................................................................................................................77. 2. 4. The ‘Vile Ingredients’ of the ‘Wholesome Mixture’: Shelley and v Mandeville.....................................................................................................................81. 2. 5. ‘Furious passions and evil propensities’: A Vindication of Natural Diet............86. 2. 6. ‘Tell me of the Political State of England – Its Literature’: Shelley and the Reform Movement.........................................................................................................92. 2. 7. ‘Sterling, Solid and Wasted Away’: Leigh Hunt and Metropolitan Political Economy........................................................................................................................95. 2. 8. ‘Talk of Roads, Canals and Bridges’: William Cobbett and Provincial Political Economy.......................................................................................................................101.