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The Art of Sensation in Shelley's Poetics of Sensibility

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Durham E-Theses The Pleasure of the Senses: The Art of Sensation in Shelley's Poetics of Sensibility KITANI, ITSUKI How to cite: KITANI, ITSUKI (2011) The Pleasure of the Senses: The Art of Sensation in Shelley's Poetics of Sensibility, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1399/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Abstract This thesis examines Shelley‘s art of sensuous imagery, or poetics of sensibility. To elucidate Shelley‘s concept of sensibility which links his poetry to its ethical and aesthetic concerns, I combine close textual readings of Shelley‘s imagery of the senses with his intellectual and cultural inheritance from the ‗Age of Sensibility‘ which encompasses ‗moral philosophy‘ (ethics and aesthetics) and ‗natural philosophy‘ (science). Chapter I focuses on Shelley‘s notions of sensuous pleasure and sympathy. A Defence of Poetry is a pivotal text that expounds Shelley‘s aesthetic and ethical taste, exemplified by his concept of sympathy. Taking up this argument, Chapter II investigates Shelley‘s vegetarian politics in Queen Mab, rooted in what I call (dis)gusto, ‗taste‘ in both its physical and aesthetic senses. Chapter III focuses on aural imagery in ‗Hymn to Intellectual Beauty‘ and ‗Mont Blanc.‘ Exploring the interplay between motion and emotion reveals how aesthetics and psychology, in Shelley‘s lyrics, are associated with the vocalisation of poetic inspiration. Chapter IV considers the relation of sight to Shelley‘s notion of the fragmentary in two ekphrastic texts concerned with visual representation, ‗The Coliseum‘ and ‗On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci, In the Florentine Gallery,‘ which illuminate Shelley‘s idea of a circulating and sympathetic power that unifies humans or subject with object, alongside a fragmentary imperative within these texts. Chapter V investigates Shelley‘s treatment of touch and Nature‘s economy in ‗The Sensitive-Plant‘ by juxtaposing Shelley‘s poem with Erasmus Darwin‘s cyclical system of Nature known as ‗organic happiness,‘ which is recognised only by sympathetic sensibility. Chapter VI considers the intermingled imagery of scent and sympathetic love in Epipsychidion in conjunction with Shelley‘s theory of nervous vibrations influenced by eighteenth-century psycho-physiological discourses, mediated through the imagery of Venus, whose duality embodies the interrelations between sensuous pleasure and ideal beauty in Shelley‘s poetics of sensibility. The Pleasure of the Senses: The Art of Sensation in Shelley’s Poetics of Sensibility by Itsuki Kitani A Thesis Submitted to Durham University for the Degree of PhD in English Studies March 2011 Copyright Statement The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the written consent of the author and information derived from it should be acknowledged. Contents List of Illustrations iv Acknowledgements v List of Abbreviations vi Preface vii Chapter I A Defence of Sensibility: An Introduction 1 Chapter II ‗Taste the Joys Which Mingled Sense and Spirit Yield‘: Shelley‘s Political Gastronomy and the Aesthetics of Sensibility in Queen Mab 39 Chapter III Hearing the Voice of the Wind: Shelley‘s ‗Poesy‘ and the Psychology of the Auditory in ‗Hymn to Intellectual Beauty‘ and ‗Mont Blanc‘ 101 Chapter IV The Fragmentary and Violence: ‗The Coliseum‘ and ‗On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vince, in the Florentine Gallery‘ 151 Chapter V ‗They Felt the Spirit from Her Glowing Fingers‘: Touch, Sympathy, and Organic Happiness in ‗The Sensitive-Plant‘ 188 Chapter VI ‗Warm Fragrance Seems to Fall from Her Light Dress‘: The Psycho-physiological Imagery of Love, Light, and Scent in Epipsychidion 233 Bibliography 280 iii Illustrations 1. Anonymous [Unknown Flemish Artist of the 16th Century], Head of Medusa 173 iv Acknowledgements I would firstly like to thank the Rotary Foundation for a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, which funded entirely my first academic year at Durham University. I would like express my thanks and deep gratitude to the Rotary foundation and all the Rotarians across the world. I would also like to thank my professors, especially Professor Yukio Kato, Takaya Sano from Tsukuba University in Japan, who first introduced me to the pleasures of English Literature and encouraged me to study abroad. I am greatly indebted to Dr Leonardo de Arrizabalaga y Prado for his careful reading of an early draft of my work and his informative comments. Much gratitude is expressed to my advisor, Professor Timothy Clark, who read an earlier version of Chapter V of this thesis and to anonymous readers at Romantic Textualities and Kaleidoscope, who commented on shorter versions of Chapter IV and V respectively. My greatest debt is owed to Dr Mark Sandy who, throughout my doctoral study, has been a constant source of help and support as a supervisor. He has always inspired and encouraged me with earnest and witty comments as well as showing great care and patience in helping me to articulate my complex and sometimes vague ideas. I could have not come this far without his support. I am deeply thankful to all my friends in Japan, the UK, and the rest of the world, who have constantly given me strength to see my project through to completion. I wish to add special thanks to my flatmates, housemates, and Japanese friends whom I met during my time at Durham as PhD student. Lastly, I would like to dedicate this thesis to my family with love and gratitude for their continuous emotional support to study in the UK. v Abbreviations CPPBS Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Donald Reiman and Neil Fraistat, 2 vols. to date (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000- ). LPBS Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Frederick L. Jones, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964). MSJ Mary, Shelley, The Journals of Mary Shelley: 1814-1844, ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert (1987; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995). MW Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Major Works, ed. Zachary Leader and Michael O‘Neill (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003). POS Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Poems of Shelley, ed. Geoffrey Matthews and Kelvin Everest et. al., 3 vols. to date (London: Longman; Harlow: Pearson, 1989- ). PW Percy Bysshe Shelley, Poetical Works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson, corr. G. M. Matthews, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1970). PWPBS Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. E. B. Murray, Corr. Ed (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). SP Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley’s Prose; or The Trumpet of A Prophecy, ed. David Lee Clark (1954; New York: New Amsterdam, 1988). SPP Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley’s Poetry and Prose: Authoritative Texts Criticism, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 2002). vi Preface The preface to the first collection of national Japanese poetry entitled Kokin Wakashū (905) starts with the following passage by Ki no Tsurayuki, poet and chief editor of this project: Japanese poetry has the human heart as seed and myriads of words as leaves. It comes into being when men use the seen and the heard to give voice to feelings aroused by the innumerable events in their lives. The song of the warbler among the blossoms, the voice of the frog dwelling in the water—these teach us that every living creature sings. It is song that moves heaven and earth without effort, stirs emotions in the invisible spirits and gods, brings harmony to the relations between men and women, and calms the hearts of fierce warriors.1 The first line of this passage is not limited to Japanese poetry, as rich natural imagery of this kind recalls British Romantic poets, including Shelley, who was able to perceive something poetic in everything on earth. In A Defence of Poetry (1820), he identifies ‗a nightingale‘ with a ‗Poet who sits in darkness, and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.‘2 Drawing on his aesthetic experience of the external world, Shelley produced numerous lyrics—‗myriads of words‘—about natural objects, emotions, politics, and many other 1 Ki no Tsurayuki, Kana Preface, Kokin Wakashū: The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry: With Tosa Nikki and Shinsen Waka, trans. Helen Craig McCullough (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1985) 3. 2 Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry, Shelley’s Poetry and Prose: Authoritative Texts Criticism, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, 2nd ed.(New York: Norton, 2002) 516 (hereafter this edition is abbreviated as SPP). Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from Shelley‘s poetry and prose are taken from this edition. vii subjects. ‗Ode to the West Wind‘ (1819) is, among other things, the quintessential lyric replete with exclamation marks and interjectory words, as is exemplified by the following tumultuous and almost desperate aspiration and declaration of Shelley‘s poet-speaker : Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! (63-67) Shelley‘s heart-felt words flee like those ‗withered leaves‘ from his heart with the hopeful promise of seeding life, to engender and ‗quicken a new life.‘ Shelley and Tsurayuki both figure the poet‘s language as the dead ‗leaves‘ and the ‗seeds‘ that allow ‗the human heart‘ new growth.
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