Shelley's Visual Imagination

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Cambridge University Press, Jun 23, 2011 - Literary Criticism - 275 pages
Shelley's drafts and notebooks, which have recently been published for the first time, are very revealing about the creative processes behind his poems, and show - through illustrations and doodles - an unexpectedly vivid visual imagination which contributed in a major way to the effect of his poetry. Shelley's Visual Imagination analyzes both verbal script and visual sketches in his manuscripts to interpret the lively personifications of concepts such as 'Liberty', 'Anarchy', or 'Life' in his completed poems. Challenging the persistent assumption that Shelley's poetry in particular and Romantic poetry more generally reject the visual for expressive voice or music, this study combines criticism with a focus upon bibliographic codes and iconic pages. The product of years of study, this much-anticipated book will be of great value for all students of Shelley.
 

Contents

text and figure
1
Chapter 2 Mab s metamorphoses
28
visual texts invisible figure
49
communicating Greek liberty in Laon and Cythna
68
representing liberty
95
Chapter 6 Refiguring genre in Shelleys Ode to Liberty
123
drafting as plot in Epipsychidion
140
death and the poets figurations in Adonais
159
figure history and inscription
186
Notes
218
Bibliography
250
Index
268
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About the author (2011)

Nancy Goslee is Professor of English Emerita at the University of Tennessee.

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