Unfamiliar Shelley

Alan M. Weinberg is Professor of English Studies at the University of South Africa, RSA. Timothy Webb is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, UK where, until recently, he was Winterstoke Professor.

• Contents: Introduction, Timothy Webb and Alan M. Weinberg. Poetry: Reading as flight: fragment poems from Shelley's notebooks, Michael Bradshaw; 'The casket of my unknown mind': the 1813 volume of minor poems, David Duff; Happily ever after? The necessity of fairytale in Queen Mab, Christopher R. Miller; Laon and the hermit: connection and succession, Jack Donovan; 'Peter Bell the Third', contempt and poetic transfiguration, Stephen C. Behrendt; Scratching at the door of absence: writing and reading 'Letter to Maria Gisborne', Timothy Webb; Shelley's Neapolitan-Tuscan poetics: 'Sonnet: Political Greatness' and the 'Republic' of Benevento, Michael Rossington. Art: Shelleyan inspiration and the sister arts, Nancy Moore Goslee. Prose: Noises on: the communicative strategies of Shelley's Prefaces, Hugh Roberts; Contemplating facts, studying ourselves: aspects of Shelley's philosophical and religious prose, Merle A. Williams; A place to stand: questions of address in Shelley's political pamphlets, Martin Priestman; Emulating Plato: Shelley as translator and prose poet, Michael O'Neill; 'These catchers of men': imposture and its unmasking in 'A Philosophical View of Reform', Alan M. Weinberg. Drama: Porcine poetics: Shelley's Swellfoot the Tyrant, Timothy Morton; Shelley's late fragmentary plays: 'Charles the First' and the 'Unfinished Drama', Nora Crook; Afterword: Tracking Shelley, Donald H. Reiman; Bibliography; Index.

’...This sizable collation, from an international cast of scholars, gives Shelley the systematic, archival ventilation received in abundance by William Wordsworth...The riches range from new arguments...to intriguing local details...Shelley studies are well positioned to conjure new theoretical models out of this work...Highly recommended.’ Choice ’... readers of Shelley can be thankful both for the excellence of the essays in this book and the energy that impels them.’ New Books on Literature-19 'The Unfamiliar Shelley demonstrate[s] that it is not only Shelley’s major, well-known poems and prose statements such as Adonais, Prometheus Unbound, and A Defence of Poetry which embody the complex synthesis on compressed and reflexive imagery, multiple meanings, and distinct but deliberately interwoven psychological perspectives that has lent Shelley’s verse its well-deserved reputation for formidable complexity and unparalleled craftsmanship. The less-frequented byways of his work exemplify these same signature traits. Explicating a poem or essay by any other major Romantic poets - indeed, by any other poet regardless of his or her era - seems like child’s play by comparison.' European Legacy