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Rethinking the Concept of Obscenity: The Erotic Subject and Self-Annihilation in the Works of Blake, Shelley, and Keats Kang-Po Chen Doctor of Philosophy English Literature School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures The University of Edinburgh 2018 Declaration I declare that this doctoral thesis has been composed solely by myself and that it has not been submitted, in whole or in part, in any previous application for a degree. Except where states otherwise by reference or acknowledgment, the work presented is entirely my own. Signature: Kang-Po Chen Date: 31.10.2018 Abstract This doctoral thesis aims to examine how certain sexual images and motifs commonly deemed “obscene” are represented as a unique aesthetic phenomenon in the works of English Romantic poets, William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. It can be observed that sexual desire becomes an emblem that the Romantics use to rebel against political and religious oppression and to establish individual subjectivity free from the restraint of scientific rationalism, further accessing a transcendental state of the “Poetic Genius.” Departing from the long-established readings of sexual desire in the Romantic poetry, this thesis first situates the idea of obscenity in the historical contexts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to reconceptualise it as an alternative form of aesthetics of self-annihilation correlated with the sublime. In the main chapters, by exploring the oft-ignored dark and violent aspects of eroticism in Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion and Milton, Shelley’s The Cenci and Laon and Cythna, and Keats’s “Isabella” and “The Eve of St. Agnes,” I argue that “obscenity” emerge in English Romanticism as a unique aesthetic phenomenon of self-annihilation, particularly empowered in the experiences of sex, religious ecstasy, and poetic creation itself. The research results of this thesis delineate that in the works of these poets, religion, art, and eroticism form an essential trinity in the human psyche that constantly seeks to build, reshape, escape from, and eventually destroy existing identities. It also epitomises the desire to go beyond the status quo and the ordinary experience of limited selfhood. An examination of this heterogeneous trinity provides an alternative angle to approach other canonised literary works of English Romanticism and explore within them the elements that are “less canonised” and “obscene.” Furthermore, it resonates with the recent studies that have highlighted the material and somatic aspects in the Romantic poets and their works. Contents Introduction Romantic Ideologies of Sexual Desire ⋯⋯ 1 The Historical Contexts of “the Obscene” ⋯⋯ 8 Aesthetic Connection between “the Obscene” and “the Sublime” ⋯⋯ 18 “The Obscene” in Romantic Poetry: Blake, Shelley, and Keats ⋯⋯ 31 Chapter 1. William Blake: Sacredness, Violence, and Degraded Masculinity Introduction: l’érotisme Sacré in “I saw a chapel all of gold” ⋯⋯ 37 Death, Violence, and Autoeroticism in Visions of the Daughters of Albion ⋯⋯ 55 Obscene Sublimity and Degraded Masculinity in Milton: a Poem ⋯⋯ 88 Chapter 2. Percy Bysshe Shelley: Incest, Suffering, and Madness Introduction: the Reconciliation of the Two Drives in A Defence of Poetry ⋯⋯ 115 The Poetic Designs of Incest in The Cenci ⋯⋯ 123 The Erotic Poetics of Suffering and Madness in Laon and Cythna ⋯⋯ 153 Chapter 3. John Keats: Poetic Imagination, Erotic Love, and Religious Ecstasy Introduction: from “Effeminacy” to the “Unpoetical” Poet ⋯⋯ 183 “Isabella” and the Pathological Poetics of Erotic Love ⋯⋯ 195 “The Eve of St. Agnes” and Keatsian Sacredness ⋯⋯ 216 Conclusion ⋯⋯ 259 Works Cited ⋯⋯ 263 Abbreviations BPD Blake’s Poetry and Designs. Edited by Mary Lynn Johnson and John E. Grant. W. W. Norton, 2008. CPPB The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. Edited by David Erdman. Anchor Books, 1998. CPWS The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Neville Rogers. Clarendon, 1972, 2 vols. Enquiry A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Edited by James T. Boulton. Blackwell, 1990. KPP Keats’s Poetry and Prose. Edited by Jeffrey N. Cox. W. W. Norton, 2009. LK The Letters of John Keats, 1814-1821. Edited by Hyder Edward Rollins. Harvard UP, 1958, 2 vols. LS The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Frederick L. Jones. Oxford UP, 1964, 2 vols. MW Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Major Works. Edited by Zachery Leader and Michael O’Neill. Oxford UP, 2009. PJK The Poems of John Keats. Edited by Jack Stillinger. Heinemann, 1978. PWS The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mary Shelley. Edward Moxon, 1874. Acknowledgement The completion of this doctoral thesis will not be possible without the help and support from many people. First, I would like to thank my principal supervisor Dr Tim Milnes for his guidance throughout these four years, my assistant supervisor Dr Simon Malpas, and the examiners of my thesis, Professor Tom Mole and Professor Andrew Bennett for their constructive criticism and advice. Also, I would like to thank Professor Jonathan White and Dr Susan Oliver from the University of Essex, without whose support I would not be able to embark on this doctoral study. My gratitude also goes to Professor Yen-bin Chiou from my alma mater National Chengchi University, Taiwan. I would like to thank many friends and colleagues in Edinburgh: Tom Stephen, Shuang Li, Jiahua Zhang, Silin Chen, and Justyna Łosiewicz for their wonderful company; Vicki Madden, Sarah Steward, and Bridget Moynihan for their constant encouragement and comfort when I encounter difficulties. My thanks go to friends from Taiwan also: Adeline Chen, Valeria Lee, Stephanie Chao, Yi Huang, Yu-Ju Lee, Chris Juang, Frank Lai, Jerry Tsai, Luke Chiu, Troy Tseng, and Yu-Cheng Jiang. I would like to express special thanks to two important individuals in my life, who both sadly passed away in 2013: my grandfather Wan-Cheng Huang for his boundless love and care, and my high school mentor Chuan- Chao Wu, who guided me when I even could not write a sentence in English. Finally, my deepest gratitude and love go to my parents and my sister for their unreserved understanding and support. All I have endeavoured to accomplish, including this thesis, are dedicated to them. INTRODUCTION ROMANTIC IDEOLOGIES OF SEXUAL DESIRE In his 1982 essay “Dangerous Blake,” W. J. T. Mitchell names “obscenity” as one of three problems in Blake’s works that awaits critical attention. He argues that “Blake was not a nice man: he was filthy with work and visionary conviction” (414).1 By using the words “obscenity” and “filthy,” Mitchell seems to imply that what Blake presents sexually in his poetry is unpleasant, offensive, and tasteless, signifying certain representations that will degrade the aesthetic value of Blake’s works. Mitchell, however, does not offer any further explanation or textual analysis. The example of Blake’s “obscenity” Mitchell refers to is only the last two lines of “I saw a chapel all of gold,” a short poem collected in Blake’s Notebook: I saw a chapel all of gold That none did dare to enter in And many weeping stood without Weeping mourning worshipping I saw a serpent rise between The white pillars of the door And he forcd & forcd & forcd Down the golden hinges tore And along the pavement sweet Set with pearls & rubies bright All his slimy length he drew, Till upon the altar white Vomiting his poison out On the bread & on the wine So I turnd into a sty And laid me down among the swine (CPPB 467-468) The sexual images are far from explicit in this poem, compared to passages such as “I’ll lie beside thee on a bank & view their wanton play / in lovely copulation” in Visions of the Daughters of Albion (7.25-26, CPPB 50) or the obvious sexual intercourse in America: a Prophecy, “when Orc assay’d his 1 The other two problems are madness and incoherence. 1 fierce embrace” upon his sister the “Shadowy Female” (1.10, CPPB 51), or again the outright championing of sexual desire that men and women mutually seek “The lineaments of Gratified Desire” (CPPB 474). One must read the serpent as the Christian archetype of Satan who lures Eve into the Fall indicative of sexual knowledge, or undergo a process of graphic imagination to picture the serpent as an ejaculating phallic image and the white altar as a receptive vulvar one. It requires certain metaphorical and metaphysical considerations to deem the poem sexual, yet it is a direct example of Mitchell’s argument about Blake’s obscenity. Obscenity, therefore, stands out from mere graphic depictions of sexual intercourse. In “I saw a chapel all of gold,” certain qualities drive Mitchell’s labelling of the poem as obscene: violence (“And he forcd & forcd & forcd”), sacrilege, excrement (“Vomiting his poison out / On the bread & on the wine”), and dehumanisation (“So I turnd into a sty / And laid me down among the swine”). The influx of sexual desire, embedded allusively in these images of obscenity, runs counter to the notion that in English Romanticism, sexual interaction is presented as a form of liberation from religious and political oppression and an access to individual subjectivity.