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For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: [email protected] warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications SHELLEY AND THE IDEA OF EFIC: A STUDY, WITH PARTICULAR REFTSiENCE TO THREE FRE-1818 NARRATIVES by FRANCIS BRETT CURTIS Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick May 1979 SUMMARY This study examines the idea of epic exemplified in Shelley's Queen Kab (1813)* Alastor (1816), and Laon and Cythna (1817), whose epic dimensions are illustrated by placing the poems within three relevant contexts: modern twentieth century criticism on the Romantic epic; late eighteenth and early nineteenth century epic practice and criticism; the concepts of dream, vision and allegory in relation to epic, found in contemporary sources of Shelley's day. Part I of the thesis establishes these three contexts, being directly supported by Appendix 2 which contains evidence suggesting Shelley's access to many of the primary sources cited. Part II is an individual reading of the three narratives; the manuscript investigation into Laon and Cythna. summarized in Appendix 1, complements the dream/vision discussion in Chapter 6. Shelley wrote three narratives before 1818 of epic dimension. The idea of epic they represent can only be adequately defined by referring to classical and renaissance epic practice and criticism, contemporary sources, twentieth century criticism, the concepts of dream, vision and allegory. The latter concepts are incorporated into the narratives in a distinctive way. Queen Mab has to be read within the context of epic represented by Joel Barlow's epic The Columbiad (1807). Alastor is a quest epic whose individualised imaginative strategy is based upon vision and myth. Laon and Cythna. although lodged within a recognizable classical epic tradition, reflects innovatory contemporary epic criticism and transcends accepted modes of heroic characterization and structural organization. The contribution to Shelley studies lies in a demonstration that the idea of epic embodied in these narratives is considerably more specific and complex than has hitherto been recognized by commentators who have either simply designated the narratives as epics in a cursory phrase or have discussed the question solely in terms of classical and renaissance epio. The narratives reflect issues, unity in epic for example, which were of fundamental importance to contemporary practitioners and critics of epic. Shelley had definite access to an extensive body of writing concerning epic from contemporary sources. PAGE CONTENTS i ACiINO'./LEDGUMJTS ii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv PART I CHAPTER 1 RECENT CRITICAL DEBATE: THE IDEA OF A •ROMANTIC EPIC* 1 2 SHELLEY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES : LATE EIGHTEENTH AND EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY VIEWS OF EPIC 25 3 SHELLEY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES: DREAM, VISION AND ALLEGORY IN RELATION TO EPIC 75 PART II 4 QUEEN MAB 119 5 ALASTOR 162 6 LAON AND CYTHNA 208 SECTION li 'A CLINGING DREAM' 209 SECTION II* HERO AND HEROINE 231 SECTION III* 'THE CONNEXION OP ITS PARTS' 261 CONCLUSIONS 288 a p p e n d i x 1 293 APPENDIX 2 312 BIBLIOGRAPHY 333 ACKNOWLE JGilS PS For kind permission to consult, quote and reproduce unpublished manuscript materials I should like to thank: the Bodleian Library and tne Clarendon Press, Oxford; the Right Hon. Lord Abinger; the Keeper of Manuscripts, University of Edinburgh Library. For permission to reproduce Leigh Hunt's marginalia on his copy of H. J. Todd's 1805 edition of Spenser's Works I am pleased to thank A. P. Burton, Assistant Keeper, Forster Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum. For information regarding various Shelley and Godwin MSS in the United Kingdom and the United States of America I am grateful to: Dr. Bruce Barker-Benfield, Assistant Librarian, the Bodleian Library, Oxford; T. A. J. Burnett, Assistant Keeper, Department of Manuscripts, the British Library; Dr. Philip Ga3kell, Librarian, Trinity College Library, Cambridge; E. D. Yeo, Assistant Keeper, The National Library of Scotland; Ann D. McDermott, Special Collections Librarian, Texas Christian University Library; Ellen S. Dunlap, Research Librarian, Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin; Donald H. Reiman, The Carl H. Pforzheimer Library, Hew York; Professor Lewis Patton, Duke University, North Carolina. 1 would also like to thank the Btaff and services of the Library, the University of Warwick, and the Library, West Sussex Institute of Higher Education. Finally, my thanks are due to Angela Bell for her meticulous typing and infinite patience in handling the earlier drafts of this thesis. ii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Plate i: Kap of South-East Asia prefacing William Robertson's Historical Disquisitions concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India. 4th edition, London, 1804 (Bodleian Library) 197 Plate ii: A page of Shelley's manuscript of canto II. acv,127-xvi,141 of Laon and Cythna (Bodleian Library) 295 Plate iiis T. Hookham: book and opera ticket receipts (John Johnson Collection, Bodleian Library) 314 Plate iv: T. Hookham, Jun. & E. T. Hookham: advertisement for newly published works, including T. L. Peacock, The Ccr.ius of the Thames (John Johnson Collection, Bodleian Library) 314 Plate v: T. Hookham: advertisement for a suite of Reading Rooms at 15t Old Bond Street (John Johnson Collection, Bodleian Library) 321 iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS KLH: English Literary History JEGP: Journal of English and Germanic Philology Julians The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck, 10 vols. New York, 1565 (Reprint). K-SJs Keats-Shelley Journal KSKBt Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin Letters: The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Frederick L. Jones, 2 vols, Oxford, 1964. KLQ: Modern Language Quarterly KP: Modem Philology MSJ s Mary Shelley*8 Journal, edited by Frederick L. Jones, Norman, Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma Press, 1947« N & Q: Notes and Queries FIlLAs Publications of the Modem language Association of America PQ« Philological Quarterly R.E.S.t Review of English Studies SIR: Studies in Romanticism SPs Studies in Philology TLSs Times Literary Supplement iv CHAPTER 1 RECKliT CRITICAL ELI ATE: THE IDEA OF A 'ROEAHTIC EPIC' It is only during the last two decades that sympathetic consideration has been given to the idea that the Romantic poets attempted to write long verse narratives of an epical nature, distinctive and cliaracteristic of their own aesthetic and literary preoccupations. The purpose of this first chapter is to introduce and review some of this recent criticism concerning the Romantic epic. The critical debate has specific relevance to my reading of Queen Kab, Alastor and Laon and Cythna in Fart II, Certain issues, e.g. the internalization of epic, the use of myth, and the identity of the epic hero, are discussed there with reference to individual poems. It is significant also that writers on the Romantic epic have rarely invoked the contemporary epic criticism of Shelley's period in their discussions. This contemporary material is crucial to my reading of Shelley's pre-1818 narratives and is presented in Chapter 2. The present chapter is concerned chiefly with the major and recurring topics of the Romantic epic debate: the problem of definition; Milton and romantic poetry; the internalization of epic and the myth of reintegration; the identity of the epic hero; the journey and quest motif, and finally the concept of universality in epic poetry. I shall discuss these topics in this order presently, but wish initially to place them within an introductory context of epic criticism which dates from the early part of this century. 2 The following three statements illustrate the general shift in attitude towards Romantic long vc-rce narratives which has taken place: It may be suggested, then, that the excellence of the lyrical poetry of Wordsworth's time, and the imperfection of the long narratives and dramas, may have a common origin. (A. C. Bradley, 1909) One striking feature of the Romantic poets is their resistance to fragmentation: their compulsion, almost, to express themselves in long continuous poems is quite as remarkable as their lyrical gifts. (N. Frye, 1963) ... every Romantic poet who wrote an epic - and all the major ones did - defended a post-Miltonic conception of the genre as the repository of their culture's highest, if often least observed, spiritual truths. (S. Curran, 1975)1 Bradley's view of the long verse narratives written by the Romantic poets is based on the position taken by Matthew Arnold some fifty years previously: these poems lack the dimension of serious intellectual concern. Arnold's description of Shelley as an 'ineffectual angel' provides a useful keynote for Bradley, who asks whether the 'inward world of the poet's soul and its shadowy adventures' could be the 'world of what we call emphatically a "great poem?"'. Frye allows equal status to lyrics and long poems alike, something which Bradley could not do in 1909s 'But the songs /of Shelley7 were more perfect 2 than the symphonies'. The characteristic of subjectivity has recently ^A. C. Bradley, 'The Long Poem in the Age of Wordsworth', Oxford Lectures on Poetry. 1917 (Reprint), p. 184} N. Frye, 'The Drunken Boat: the Revolutionary Element in Romanticism' in N. Frye, ed., Romanticism Reconsidered: Selected Papers from the English Institute. New York. Columbia University Press, 1966 (Reprint), pp. 15-16} S.