Shelley's grave, public domain photograph

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

A selective list of literary criticism for the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the Modern Language Association Guidelines for Authors of Web Pages

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Introduction

"Percy Bysshe Shelley." A brief biography of Shelley. Academy of American Poets.

A Percy Bysshe Shelley chronology, ed. Carl Stahmer. Romantic Circles.

"Shelley Sites/Sights." Eds. Darby Lewes and Bob Stiklus. The editors have taken many photographs of places where Shelley spent the three decades of his life, from his birth at Field Place to his burial in the Protestant cemetery in Rome, many more of which survive than would be expected. A biographical sketch accompanied by photographs. Romantic Circles.

Mikics, David. "Percy Bysshe Shelley: 'Ozymandias.'" Poetry Foundation. Ed. Catherine Halley.

Morton, Timothy. The Cambridge Companion to Shelley (Cambridge UP 2006). Substantial excerpt from the Introduction. "Shelley would have loved the internet," notes Morton.

Sandy, Mark. "Percy Bysshe Shelley". 7 July 2001. Literary Encyclopedia. Eds. Robert Clark, Emory Elliott, Janet Todd. An introduction to the poet, from a database that provides signed literary criticism by experts in their field, and is available to individuals for a reasonably-priced subscription. Also Queen Mab.

The Romantic Revival; Shelley. Quite old criticism and obnoxious ads, from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907-21). Sections on Queen Mab; Alastor; Laon and Cythna; Prometheus Unbound; The Cenci; Peter Bell the Third; Shelley's Odes; Epipsychidion; Adonais; The Defence of Poetry; The Triumph of Life Queen Mab, and Alastor.

Literary Criticism

An, Young-Ok. "Beatrice's gaze revisited: anatomizing The Cenci." Criticism, Winter 1996.

Bennett, Betty and Stuart Curran (eds.) A review of Shelley: Poet and Legislator of the World. (Johns Hopkins UP 1996). Reviewed by Jack Donovan, Romanticism on the Net 19 (Aug. 2000).

Berry, Amanda. "Some of my Best Friends are Romanticists." Romanticism on the Net 36-37 (Nov. 2004-Feb. 2005).

Bleasdale, John. "'To Laughter': Shelley's Sonnet and Solitude," Romanticism on the Net 22 (May 2001).

Brigham, Linda. "Alastor, Apostasy, and the Ecology of Criticism." Romantic Circles Irony and Clerisy, August 1999.

Clark, Timothy and Jerrold E. Hogle (eds.) Evaluating Shelley. (Edinburgh UP 1996). Reviewed by Mark Sandy in Romanticism on the Net 16 (1999).

Cochran, Peter. "Byron and Shelley: Radical Incompatibles." Romanticism on the Net 43 (August 2006).

Corbett, Robert M. "The Violence of the Sacred: The Economy of Sacrifice in The Cenci." On Rene Girard's theory of the violent origins of community and Shelley's The Cenci. Romanticism on the Net 4 (Nov. 1996).

Cox, Jeffrey N. A review of Cox's Poetry and Politics in the Cockney School: Keats, Shelley, Hunt and their Circle. (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998); and The Examiner, 1818-1822, introduced by Yasuo Deguchi, 5 vols. (Pickering and Chatto 1998). Reviewed by Nicholas Roe, Romanticism on the Net 14 (1999).

Duff, David. Review of Duff's Romance and Revolution: Shelley and the Politics of a Genre (Cambridge UP 1994). Reviewed by Mark Sandy in Romanticism on the Net 1 (Feb. 1996).

Esterhammer, Angela. "Improvisational Aesthetics: Byron, the Shelley Circle, and Tommaso Sgricci." Romanticism on the Net 43 (August 2006).

Fraistat, Neil, editor and introduction. Early Shelley: Vulgarisms, Politics, and Fractals. Romantic Circles August 1997.

Gladden, Samuel. "Shelley's Agenda Writ Large: Reconsidering Oedipus Tyrannus; or, Swellfoot the Tyrant." Romantic Circles; Reading Shelley's Interventionist Poetry, 1819-1820.

Haines, Simon. A review of Haines' Shelley's Poetry: The Divided Self (St. Martin's P 1997). Reviewed by Jonathan Fortier, Romanticism on the Net 13 (Feb. 1999).

Hancock, Stephen. "'Shelley Himself in Petticoats': Joanna Baillie's Orra and Non-violent Masculinity as Remorse in The Cenci" On the relationships between Percy Bysshe Shelley's non-violent politics and the gothic drama of Joanna Baillie. Romanticism on the Net 31 (August 2003).

Hewitt, Regina. "Landor, Shelley, and the Design of History." Article takes Shelley's work as the Romantic "cognitive reference point" for evaluating Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations. Romanticism on the Net 20 (Nov. 2000).

Hoeveler, Diane Long. "Beatrice Cenci in Hawthorne, Melville and her Atlantic-Rim Contexts." Transatlantic Romanticism: Romanticism on the Net 38-39 (May-Aug. 2005).

Jones, Steven. A review of Jones' Shelley's Satire: Violence, Exhortation, and Authority (Northern Illinois UP 1994). Reviewed in Criticism, Winter 1996, by Mark Kipperman.

Kaufman, Robert. "Intervention & Commitment Forever! Shelley in 1819, Shelley in Brecht, Shelley in Adorno, Shelley in Benjamin.*" Romantic Circles; Reading Shelley's Interventionist Poetry, 1819-1820.

Kenyon Jones, Christine. "'When this world shall be former': Catastrophism as imaginative theory for the younger Romantics," Romanticism on the Net 24 (2001).

Kipperman, Mark. "Shelley, Adorno, and the Scandal of Committed Art." Reading Shelley's Interventionist Poetry, 1819-1820. Romantic Circles 2001.

Kipperman, Mark. "Coleridge, Shelley, Davy, and science's millennium." [Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Humphry Davy]. "There has been a general assumption among literary critics that a turn to idealism marks a rejection of science, or scientific method, or even empirical knowledge as such.(6) It remains puzzling, however, that a Shelley might retain his enthusiasm for science, even while, in the Defence of Poetry, clearly subordinating it to the guidance of imagination and moral leadership." Criticism, Summer 1998.

Kitson, Peter, (ed.) A review of Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley Casebooks. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996). Reviewed by Robert M. Corbett, Romanticism on the Net 7 (Aug. 1997).

Knapp, John. "The Spirit of Classical Hymn in Shelley's 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,'" On Shelley's experimental techniques, as exemplified in "The Hymn to Intellectual Beauty." "The poem is in dialogue with the classical hymn, a genre to which tradition grants unusual structural flexibility and in which writers, including Shelley, find both a positive support and a challenge to their innovative skill." Style, Spring 1999.

Lee, Monika H. "'Nature's Silent Eloquence': Disembodied Organic Language in Shelley's Queen Mab." First page of article only. Nineteenth-Century Literature, 48 (Sep., 1993).

Lussier, Mark. "Wave Dynamics as Primary Ecology in Shelley's Prometheus Unbound" On Shelley's use of the imagery of light and the scientific context of wave versus particle theories of light. Romanticism on the Net 16 (Nov. 1999).

McGann, Jerome J. "The Beauty of the Medusa: A Study in Romantic Literary Iconology." Part of a Romantic Circles special segment on Shelley's "On The Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci." Also in this edition are the text of the poem and informal responses and additional articles: "Ekphrasis and the Other," by W. J. T. Mitchell; and "Shelley, Medusa, and the Perils of Ekphrasis," by Grant F. Scott. Romantic Circles Electronic Editions, 1/5/98.

Mitchell, Robert. "'Here is thy fitting Temple': Science, Technology and Fiction in Shelley's Queen Mab," Romanticism on the Net 21 (2001).

Morton, Timothy. A rev. of Morton's Shelley and the Revolution in Taste: The Body and the Natural World. (Cambridge UP 1995). Reviewed by Robert Corbett, Romanticism on the Net 212 (Nov. 1998) Another rev. Criticism, Winter, 1997 by Steven Jones.

Morton, Timothy. "Queen Mab as Topological Repertoire." Via two topoi, 'Blood and Gold' and 'Ecotopia,' Morton focuses on the poetics rather than the politics of Queen Mab. Romantic Circles Early Shelley, August 1997.

Mullan, John, (ed.) A review of Lives of the Great Romantics: Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth by their Contemporaries (1996). "This three-volume set contains facsimile reproductions of biographical accounts of three major poets of the Romantic period." Reviewed by Michael Laplace-Sinatra, Romanticism on the Net 5 (Feb. 1997).

Pyle, Forest. "'Frail Spells': Shelley and the Ironies of Exile." Romantic Circles Irony and Clerisy, August 1999.

Quillin, Jessica K. "'An assiduous frequenter of the Italian opera': Shelley's Prometheus Unbound and the opera buffa." Romantic Circles Romanticism and Opera, May 2005.

Roussetzki, Remy. "Theater of Anxiety in Shelley's The Cenci and Musset's Lorenzaccio." [Percy Shelley, Alfred de Musset]. Criticism, Winter 2000.

Scrivener, Michael. Introduction to "Reading Shelley's Interventionist Poetry, 1819-1820." Special Romantic Circles edition, 2001.

Sharp, Michele Turner. "Mirroring the Future: Adonais, Elegy, and the Life in Letters," On Shelley's memorial poem on the death of John Keats. "From the outset, Adonais, the pastoral elegy that Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote for his fellow poet, John Keats, strikes an odd note. It was written at a time when pastoral elegy had become both obsolete and explicitly maligned." Criticism, Summer 2000.

Stroup, William. "Henry Salt on Shelley: Literary Criticism and Ecological Identity," Essay considers the implications of using an early cultural critic, Henry Salt, as a model for contemporary Ecocriticism. Romantic Circles Praxis Series /Romanticism and Ecology, Nov. 2001.

Urquhart, Troy. "Metaphor, Transfer, and Translation in Plato's Ion: The Postmodern Platonism of Percy Bysshe Shelley's A Defence Poetry" Urquhart contends that "the Ion presents a model for the creation and transfer of meaning that is remarkably similar to that described by Shelley's A Defence of Poetry." Romanticism on the Net 31 (August 2003).

Weinberg, Alan. "'Yet in its depth what treasures': Shelley's Transforming Intellect and the Paradoxical Example of Coleridge," Romanticism on the Net 22 (2001).

Weinberg, Alan M. (ed.) The Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts Volume XXII and Donald H. Reiman and Michael O'Neill, eds., Fair-Copy Manuscripts. Reviewed by Jack Donovan, Romanticism on the Net 22 (2001).

Weisman, Karen. A review of Weisman's Imageless Truths: Shelley's Poetic Fictions (U of Pennsylvania P 1994). Reviewed in Criticism, Winter, 1996 by Mark Kipperman.

Wheatley, Kim. Shelley and His Readers: Beyond Paranoid Politics. Reviewed by Dianna Gilroy in Romanticism on the Net 21 (Feb. 2001).

Web sites, Bibliography

Norton introduction to Shelley's Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem, brief introduction and selections from Cantos 8 and 9, from "The French Revolution - Apocalyptic Expectations" in the Norton Anthology of Literature.

Romanticism on the Net. Ed. Michael Eberle-Sinatra. An international, peer-reviewed electronic journal devoted to British Romantic studies, an impressive scholarly enterprise that has been making essays freely available since 1996.

Romantic Circles. Eds. Neil Fraistat, Steven E. Jones, and Carl Stahmer. "A refereed scholarly website devoted to the study of Romantic-period literature and culture." An innovative publication on topics in Romanticism.

The Wordworth Circle. Ed. Marilyn Gaull. Information about subscribing.

"Web Concordance." Ed. Rob Watt. Six concordances with wordlists: P.B. Shelley's Selected Poems; Coleridge's The Ancyent Marinere; Keats's Odes 1819; Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience; Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads 1798; Gerard Manley Hopkins' Poems First Edition, 1918; also software to make your own concordance.

Romanticism

"A Romantic Natural History." Ed. Ashton Nichols. The relationships between literary works and natural history in the century before Darwin, with articles on Percy Shelley and other Romantics.

A review of The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, by Richard Holmes. Winner of the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. NY Times, 16 July 2009.

Editions & Manuscripts

Reiman, Donald H. and Neil Fraistat (eds.) About The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, Johns Hopkins University Press. Vol. 1 (2000), Vol. 2 (2005)

Reiman, Donald H. and Neil Fraistat (eds.) An annotated presentation of "The Devil's Walk." Demonstrates nice use of electronic editions for presenting textual and contextual notes. At Romantic Circles a sample from The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Johns Hopkins) edited by Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat

Reiman, Donald H. and Neil Fraistat (eds.) A review of The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 1 (2000). Reviewed by Michael O'Neill, Romanticism on the Net 20 (Nov. 2000); Review of Vol. 2 (2005) by Timothy Morton, Romanticism on the Net 43 (Aug. 2006)

Fraistat, Neil. "The Workshop of Shelley's Poetry." Fraistat describes the editing of Shelley's text for The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Johns Hopkins). "Whereas Matthews and Everest carried the editing of Shelley's poetry as far as it could go using the chronological, reader-centered principles championed by the Longman series, Don Reiman and I have undertaken a quite different task. We are producing an authorially governed, historically focused, and text-centered edition that highlights the production, reception, and transmission of his poetry. Our approach, based on Forman's example, has not been pursued seriously since 1880 and we believe it is best designed not only to address the still problematic textual history of Shelley's work but also to make effective use of the wealth of new textual evidence made available." Romanticism on the Net 19 (August 2000)

Everest, Kelvin and Geoffrey Matthews (eds.) A review of The Poems of Shelley. Volume Two: 1817-1819. Edited by Kelvin Everest and Geoffrey Matthews (Longman, 2000). Reviewed by Lisa Vargo, Romanticism on the Net 24 (2001)

Rogers, Neville (ed.) Review of The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Vol. I, 1802-1813 by Neville Rogers (Oxford Univ. Press, 1972). Reviewed by Robert C. Casto, The Review of English Studies, 25 (May 1974)

Shelley's notebooks in the Bodleian Library, compiled by Tatsuo Tokoo, at Romantic Circles

Crook, Nora and Timothy Webb (eds.) The 'Faust' Draft Notebook: (Garland, 1997). A review by Michael O'Neill, Romanticism on the Net 13 (Feb. 1999)

Web display showing Shelley's hand-written changes of a page from his 1813 printed Queen Mab. From the Pforzheimer collection, NY Public Library (removed)

Sloan, Gary. "Shelley the Atheist." "Shelley's tracts on religion aren't sensational or bombastic. They are erudite disquisitions tailored to reflective minds. They are grounded in Shelley's voluminous knowledge of philosophy, history, languages, literature, logic, and science." American Atheist Magazine, Autumn, 2003 (removed)

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