Abstract
Shelley spent the last four years of his life in Italy, and produced, in that period, the most accomplished poems of his career. These compositions have been accorded close critical attention in recent times, marking a revival of interest in Shelley’s poetry that has done a great deal to dispel the prejudices of an earlier generation of critics. Yet the fact that Shelley’s mature poems were all written and, as it were, nurtured in Italy, is not given sufficient emphasis in the general re-appraisal of his poetry. The edicts of ‘practical criticism’ die hard and, significant exceptions to the contrary, the poet’s work is still treated as an autonomous body of material linked adventitiously, and therefore not intrinsically, to the physical and cultural environment in which it was written.
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Notes
There has been a growing recognition of the importance of the Italian element in Shelley’s poetry. Significant studies in English since those of Scudder (1895: 96–114), Toynbee (1909: 214–30), Bradley (1914: 441–56) and Stawell (1914: 104–31) are those of P. N. Roy, Shelley’s Epipsychidion (1938) and Shelley and Italian Literature (1943);
John Lehmann, Introduction to Shelley in Italy: An Anthology (1947: 7–40);
Milton Wilson, ‘Shelley’s Italian Imagery’ in Shelley’s Later Poetry (1959: 102–28);
Neville Rogers, ‘Italian Platonics and Epipsychidion’ in Shelley at Work (1967: 230–48);
Timothy Webb, ‘The Secret Things of Love: Shelley, Dante, and Italy’ and ‘Translating the Untranslatable: The Divine Comedy’ in The Violet in the Crucible (1976: 276–336); and Katherine Folliot, Shelley’s Italian Sunset (1983 1st pub. 1979). Webb’s study provides the fullest examination in English to date of Shelley’s Italian studies, and his conclusions regarding the importance of the Italian strain are a landmark in this field of research. He pointedly asserts that ‘Italy had a profound influence on Shelley and his work’ (1976: 277). There is a harmonious interplay between Shelley’s developing powers and the creative presence of Italy, with the result that in Italy ‘Shelley produced nearly all of his best work’ (277). Webb shows a firm grasp of the way Shelley’s Italian experience came to fruition in his poetry. Of the essays dealing specifically with Shelley’s Italian experience in the last twenty-five years, one must cite, in particlar, the work of Frederic S. Colwell on Shelley’s response in Italy to sculpture and painting (1979: 59–77; 1980: 43–66); Steve Ellis on Shelley’s assessment of Dante (1983: 1–35); Daniel Hughes on the correspondence between Shelley and Leonardo da Vinci (1970:195–212); Fred L. Milne on The Cenci and the Ninth Circle of Dante’s Hell (1977: 117–32); George Yost on the possible influence of Pieracci on The Cenci ( 1986: 1–52 );
Richard E. Brown on the role of Dante in Epipsychidion (1978: 223–35); Earl J. Schulze on Shelley’s engagement with Dantean and Petrarchan elements in Epipsychidion and The Triumph of Life (1982: 191–216; 1988: 31–62); and Richard Fogle on Dante’s links with Adonais ( 1967: 11–21 ).
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© 1991 Alan M. Weinberg
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Weinberg, A.M. (1991). Introduction. In: Shelley’s Italian Experience. Studies in Romanticism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21649-9_1
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