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History and Vision in Byron, the Shelleys, and Keats Timothy Ruppert

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History and Vision in Byron, the Shelleys, and Keats Timothy Ruppert Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Spring 2008 "Is Not the Past All Shadow?": History and Vision in Byron, the Shelleys, and Keats Timothy Ruppert Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Ruppert, T. (2008). "Is Not the Past All Shadow?": History and Vision in Byron, the Shelleys, and Keats (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/1132 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “IS NOT THE PAST ALL SHADOW?”: HISTORY AND VISION IN BYRON, THE SHELLEYS, AND KEATS A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Timothy Ruppert March 2008 Copyright by Timothy Ruppert 2008 “IS NOT THE PAST ALL SHADOW?”: HISTORY AND VISION IN BYRON, THE SHELLEYS, AND KEATS By Timothy Ruppert Approved March 25, 2008 _____________________________ _____________________________ Daniel P. Watkins, Ph.D. Jean E. Hunter , Ph.D. Professor of English Professor of History (Dissertation Director) (Committee Member) _____________________________ _____________________________ Albert C. Labriola, Ph.D. Magali Cornier Michael, Ph.D. Professor of English Professor of English (Committee Member) (Chair, Department of English) _____________________________ Albert C. Labriola, Ph.D. Dean, McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Professor of English iii ABSTRACT “IS NOT THE PAST ALL SHADOW?”: HISTORY AND VISION IN BYRON, THE SHELLEYS, AND KEATS By Timothy Ruppert March 2008 Dissertation Supervised by Professor Daniel P. Watkins 238 pages Throughout the British Romantic period, poets and prose writers shared a keen interest in the imaginative possibilities conferred by the national legacy of literary prophecy. The subversive and transformative elements of the vatic tradition in England, particularly as established by John Milton’s aesthetically and politically radical work, appealed to both older and younger Romantic writers who sought not simply to describe their times but to remake them. To such minds, prophecy offered a historically authoritative genre equipped with unique aesthetic principles and a seemingly timely interventionist ethic, whether turned to the renovation of individual men and women or of whole communities. After the Battle of Waterloo decisively concluded the Napoleonic Wars, however, Romantic literary prophecy in England underwent a significant transformation. This study addresses how four major British postwar authors—namely, Byron, the Shelleys, and Keats—engage and challenge the ideas and ideals of visionary poetics and so iv assert new perspectives on literary prophecy in contradistinction to the first wave Romantics’ aesthetic values and tenets. Over the course of this discussion, I look closely at Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound , Byron’s The Vision of Judgment , Mary Shelley’s The Last Man , and select lyrical pieces from Keats. Although Shelley in part carries forward the visionary spirit of Blake and the Lake Poets, Byron, Mary Shelley, and Keats actively question that spirit and its expression in literary art. Consequently, these second wave Romantics facilitate the discontinuation of what the twentieth-century scholar Joseph Anthony Wittreich, Jr., calls the English line of vision, that is, an artistic genealogy stretching from the Romantics to Milton, Spenser, Sidney, and Chaucer (and, ultimately, to the prophets of Judeo-Christian scripture). This study, then, presents an evaluation of why the younger Romantics countervail the British visionary poetics tradition and how this important change in the general artistic imagination reflects both the hopes and the disenchantments of the British post-Napoleonic moment. v ACKNOWLEDGMENT I wish to express my sincere and deep appreciation to the McAnulty College and Graduate School for awarding me the 2007-2008 Dissertation Fellowship. I shall be forever grateful for the faith that the College showed in me through this award. I wish also to thank the Department of English and its outstanding faculty, some of whom I have known since I first arrived at Duquesne in the spring of 1988. I am especially grateful to Kathy Glass, whose kindness and support significantly helped me in completing this piece. My dissertation committee comprises three of the finest people I have met over the course of my career at Duquesne. I thank Albert Labriola and Jean Hunter for agreeing to participate as readers. Furthermore, I am honored to have worked on this project with Dan Watkins, who has been a constant source of both edification and inspiration since he invited me to enroll in an Honors Seminar in Romantic Drama which he taught in 1989. I count myself not simply fortunate but blessed to have learned so much from so superb a scholar and individual. I offer my heartfelt thanks also to Professor Sam Tindall, who retired just before I returned to Duquesne as a Ph.D. student. After one course with Professor Tindall, I changed my major from History to English. I may say, without hyperbole, that his influence on my intellectual life has been inestimable. Without the encouragement of certain colleagues, the completion of this study would not have been possible. I thank my dear friends Jesse and Christine Gipko, Rich Clark, vi Matt Vickless, and Sharon George for their insight, optimism, and friendship. I benefit both professionally and personally from my relationships with these fine people. I thank my immediate family, including my mother, Joan Ruppert, my sister, Allison Ruppert, and my aunt, Suzanne Rander. I also thank my closest friend, Janice Friel, who persuaded me to pursue a Ph.D. and helped me throughout coursework, examinations, and the creation of this dissertation. Her care and thoughtfulness are incomparable. Lastly, I want to include a word of appreciation for Flurry, my English Shetland sheepdog, whose affection and companionship cheered me throughout the composition of this study. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………...iv Acknowledgment……………………………………………………………………........vi Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 1 Visionary Poetics and Regency Romanticism………………………............................11 2 “A light like a green star”: Love’s Prophetic Reformation in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound …………………………………………………………….55 3 The Privilege of Southey’s Damnation: Visionary Poetry and the Devil’s Scripture in Lord Byron’s The Vision of Judgment ………………………………………..98 4 Time and the Sibyl in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man ………………………………...129 5 “Fled is that music”: John Keats’s Challenge to Romantic Vision………………….160 Notes……………………………………………………………………………………191 Selected Bibliography…………………………………………………………………..220 viii Introduction “The case is, that the word prophet , to which later times have affixed a new idea, was the Bible word for poet, and the word prophesying meant the art of making poetry. It also meant the art of playing poetry to a tune upon any instrument of music.” —Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason , First Part (1794) 1 This study examines British Romantic literary prophecy in the later Regency period, that is, in the years after the Seventh Coalition—an international alliance that included the United Kingdom—decisively defeated Napoleon Bonaparte and the First French Empire at Waterloo, Belgium, on 18 June 1815. The English Regency period encompassed the nine years between 1811, when the Prince Regent became acting sovereign in place of his father, King George III, and 1820, when the Prince Regent acceded to the throne following his father’s death. The period of hostilities with France, however, began in 1793 and continued almost without interruption until 1815. The British victory at Waterloo thus concluded nearly twenty-two years of war with France, at first a Revolutionary and finally an imperial state. My focus, then, is on the changes in Romantic visionary literature during England’s postwar years, a period that includes and extends somewhat beyond the English Regency timeframe. Throughout the British Romantic period (very roughly, 1789 to 1832), poets and prose writers shared a keen interest in the imaginative possibilities conferred by the national legacy of literary prophecy. The subversive and transformative elements of the vatic 1 2 tradition in England, particularly as established by John Milton’s aesthetically and politically radical work, appealed to both older and younger Romantic writers who sought not simply to describe their times but to remake them. To such minds, prophecy offered a historically authoritative genre equipped with unique aesthetic principles and a seemingly timely interventionist ethic, whether turned to the renovation of individual men and women or of whole communities. Literary prophecy, as epitomized by Milton’s highly influential oeuvre, represented a way for art to come to terms with both personal and public conflicts in an age of serious historical crisis. In a general sense, this shared interest in Milton’s art and prophetic persona unites the British Romantic writers of both the wartime and postwar generations. 2 The Miltonic legacy provides a helpful framework for the scholar who seeks to
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