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Appendix a Shelley Survey: Which Shelley Now? G Appendix A Shelley Survey: Which Shelley Now? G. Kim Blank In the Preface to Prometheus Unbound Shelley notes that creative indi­ viduals are inescapably the creators and creations of their own age. As a poet, then, Shelley saw himself as a producer and product of the particular historical moment. But Shelley saw poets as creators and creations of circumstances beyond their lifetime. When Shelley says at the end of the Defence that poets use 'words which express what they understand not' (Shelley, 1977, p.508), he is opening poetry up to a scene of eternal interpretations. Thus the Shelley of 1822 is created anew as, for example, the Shelley of 1889, 1936 or 1990. Shelley knew that he would become at least as much a product of circumstantial biases and changing views of literary and critical worth as a creation of his own time. By virtue of being taught, written about and anthologised, Shelley has thus become institu­ tionalised, ideologised, constituted and reconstituted - all, of course, to justify various pedagogical, critical, theoretical and often political ends and needs. Behind all of this lurks a question: why teach Shelley at all? We don't necessarily have to fall back to ask the larger, overwhelming question (i.e. why teach literature?), but while admitting that Shelley has become canonised, we can formulate a question which, in the context of The New Shelley, is appropriate to address: which Shelley is being taught? A survey was carried out in an attempt to discover which Shelley is being perpetuated in upper-level undergraduate courses in the USA, Canada and Great Britain. Much university teaching is carried out in a kind of vacuum, and often we tend to teach what we were taught or what text books direct us to teach. The results of this survey will aid teachers of Romanticism in contextualising their classroom practices. I THE SURVEY Questionnaires were sent out to just over 100 randomly chosen universities in the USA, Canada and Great Britain. Eighty-four completed responses were returned, although a few more were returned only partially completed but with some usable information. The objective was to determine which of Shelley'S works are represented in upper-level undergraduate courses taught under the auspices of 'Romanticism' or 'English Romantic Poetry' . 242 G. Kim Blank 243 The survey also intended to solicit candid responses not just about Shelley as a poet, but about Shelley's status as a poet relative to that thing called 'Romanticism' and to the other major Romantic poets. The very idea of comparing these poets by 'rank' under the guise of 'importance to Romanticism' was considered offensive enough to provoke charged comments. Many respondents did indeed jump, and in this respect alone the survey contains results that openly express the critical attitude towards Shelley in the late 1980s. II WHICH TEXTBOOKS? The textbook selected by an instructor obviously influences course con­ tent. Instructors teaching courses like 'Romantic Poetry' normally have two choices: they can use either a period anthology or an individual volume for each poet. In the case of the former, there are of course restrictions on the number of works included, as well as problems with the potentially unrepresentative quality. On the other hand, if individual volumes for each poet are used, there is usually a choice between 'selected' or 'complete' editions. The 'selected' editions often present the same problem as anthologies, while the justification for having students purchase a 'complete' text when they may only use a fraction of the material may be wanting. The table below, which breaks down particular course texts into the percentage of time used, shows that Shelley is more or less divided in being taught out of anthologies and collections of his poetry. A number of respondents indicated that they vary their texts, and this accounts for the total number of responses exceeding 84. The table is to be interpreted in such a way that, taking the first line as an example, we read it: the Perkins % of the time used Total USA Canada UK 100 (48 responses) (27 responses) (25 responses) Perkins! 27 31 44 Reiman2 17 25 11 8 Webb3 9 4 32 Norton4 12 17 11 4 OSAs 3 4 4 Bioom/Trilling6 8 8 8 8 Cameron? 5 6 8 Heath8 2 8 Noyes9 3 4 4 Butter 10 2 8 Other 8 5 2 20 No text 4 16 100% 100% 100% 100% Notes 1-10: see chapter notes for full details. 244 Appendix A Shelley Survey: Which Shelley Now? text is used 27% of the time in courses on Romanticism, which breaks down into 31% of the time in the USA, 44% of the time in Canada, and 0% of the time in the United Kingdom (UK). It must first of all be remembered that undergraduate studies in English Literature at UK universities do not often employ the numbered course system; rather, there are a series of required papers in chosen areas. This very much changes the requirement of 'set' textbooks. In North America it appears that David Perkins' English Romantic Writers (1967) has stood up well over two decades, taking 31% of the market share in the USA and 44% in Canada. Besides the fact that some of the texts of individual poems are faulty in light of advances in more recent Shelley textual scholarship, it could be argued that the selection of the works is reasonably representative. However, it may be regrettable that The Revolt of Islam (or Laon and Cythna) and The Cenci do not appear even in an appended or selected passages version; and it is certainly regrettable that only the first 211 lines of Julian and Maddalo are given - in other words, we are without the problematical centre of the poem: the Maniac's words. The Norton Critical Edition (Shelley's Poetry and Prose) edited by Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers has done almost as well on Romantic courses as Perkins' anthology; it is especially popular in the US market, although in Britain it is not nearly as popular as Timothy Webb's Selected Poems. Perhaps the other item worth noting is that the Oxford Standard Authors (OSA) edition (edited by Thomas Hutchinson and corrected by G. M. Matthews) has probably lost much ground in the last ten years or so, and will continue to lose the Shelley market until (or unless) a new edition is prepared in the relatively new Oxford Authors series. III WHICH WORKS? Respondents were asked to list which works by Shelley they teach. The survey reveals that the Ode to the West Wind is the most popular, appearing in courses on Romanticism 83% of the time. A grouping of four other works are taught betwen 70 and 80% of the time: Adonais, A Defence of Poetry, Mont Blanc, and the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. Two other poems are taught more than 60% of the time: Prometheus Unbound and To a Sky-Lark. Below is the complete listing and the percentage of times the work is taught. Works taught less than 5% of the time are not included. 1. Ode to the West Wind 83% 11. Ozymandias 32% 2. Adonais 80% 12. Epipsychidion 29% 3. A Defence of Poetry 77% 13. England in 1819 27% 4. Mont Blanc 71% 14. Julian and Maddalo 27% 5. Hymn to Intellectual Beauty 70% 15. The Cloud 24% 6. Prometheus Unbound 67% 16. Lines ... Euganean Hills 19% 7. To a Sky-Lark 62% 17. Lift Not the Painted Veil 18% 8. Alastor 44% 18. Stanzas - April 1814 13% 9. The Triumph of Life 33% 19. The Cenci 12% 10. The Mask of Anarchy 33% 20. Song to the Men of Eng land 12% G. Kim Blank 245 21. On Life 11% 27. The Witch of Atlas 5% 22. The Sensitive-Plant 10% 28. Lines: 'When the lamp is shattered' 5% 23. Mutability (1814) 9% 29. With a Guitar. To Jane 5% 24. OnLove 8% 30. Queen Mab 5% 25. Ode to Liberty 7% 31. Hellas 5% 26. To Jane (The keen stars . .. ') 6% 32. To - ('Music, when soft . .') 5% Note that Alastor stands more or less on its own at 44%, and is followed by another close grouping of seven other works ranging between 24 and 33%. Everything else gets taught less than 20% of the time, with only Lift Not the Painted Veil and Lines written among the Euganean Hills showing any noteworthy popularity. The average number of works by Shelley taught in courses on English Romanticism is ten, with the range being 0 (!) to 37. This list shows some good things and some bad things. It is a good sign that A Defence of Poetry ranks so highly: Shelley's poetics should be put into the context of his own work and nineteenth-century literature theories of poetic production. At the same time it is disappointing that poems like Julian and Maddalo (27%) and Epipsychidion (29%) are not taught more frequently. Both poems can be seen as central in terms of negotiating the autobiographical-allegorical problems in Shelley's poetry as well as dis­ playing the parameters and style of narrative tone and distancing in his poetry. Based on the infrequency that Hellas (5%), The Cenci (12%), and Lines written among the Euganean Hills (19%) are taught, the space in the otherwise excellent Reiman and Powers Norton Critical Edition granted to essays on these poems hardly seems warranted. (An essay on The Triumph of Life might have been more appropriate.) It is also surprising that Alastor is not taught more frequently, since scholarship generally recognises it as Shelley'S first important poem; moreover, most of Shelley's subsequent poetry can be directly traced back to Alastor.
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