イギリス・ロマン派研究

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "イギリス・ロマン派研究"

ひろきとくやす
4 years ago
Views:

1 Synopsis Frederick Jones suggested in his notes to Shelley s letter to John Gisborne that the poet s own description of Epipsychidion as a mysterious poem written only for the Synetoi, the initiated, was an intentional mystification. In spite of critics who agree with Jones s view considering either Shelley s anxiety about finding an audience for the poem or the need to protect himself from attacks based on misconstrued relationships, it seems worthwhile to see the poem as indeed an esoteric poem. Shelley always felt like a Synetoi as part of an intellectual minority carrying, like Prometheus, secret wisdom as their only weapon against the powerful and repressive establishment. Shelley s increasing sense of disappointment in finding audience in his later years led him to the idea of poetic tradition in which the best poetic spirit is disseminated across time as he eloquently argued in A Defence of Poetry. He saw himself as participating in that great tradition. Epipsychidion has characteristics as an esoteric text with its assumed distinction between the initiated and the uninitiated. Reading the poem as an exoteric text with ritualistic elements answers a number of questions, including the issues of its elaborate Renaissance style, the ambiguous identity of the Sweet Spirit, the relevance of the philosophic statement on love to the idealized history of the poet, its concern with poetry and language, the reason for the apparently escapist message of the envoi to get away from the ignorant mass, and finally, the political implications this poem may possibly have. The ideal esoteric audience for Shelley would appreciate the imaginative poetic language of the poem, understand the poetic tradition that celebrates love as exemplified by Dante, and share Shelley s view that the social institution of marriage sustains the sexual [ 67 ]

2 68 discrimination, the property system, and inequality. The poem is supposed to provide a ritual for the purpose of inspiring visionaries to unite and follow the imagination and the love principle so that, despite the adverse time, the tradition of imaginative poetry can be transmitted to future generations. the esoteric few 1 the vulgar Letters 363 Letters 363n Behrendt 229 Behrendt

3 69 the initiated Guénon 7 2 Poetry & Prose 392 Convivio Poetry & Prose sage

4 70 25 Dante Reynolds 13 18

5 71 Dante I you they Poetry & Prose 508 deixis I pant, I sink... I

6 72 Ulmer Shelley, The Poems of Shelley, vol. 4: 131 Leighton 225 4

7 wrong wrong Leighton it

8 74 Sweet Spirit! Whose empire is the name thou weepest on 4

9 dare Shelley, The Complete Poetry 2: 255 N. Brown 97 98

10 76 Behrendt Everest R. Brown 231

11 honey-dew, killing Leighton

12 78 Poetry and Prose 407n it builds beyond the grave it its The Prose Works

13 79 1 Frederick L. Jones, ed., The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols. II, p Letters 2 Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, eds., Shelley s Poetry and Prose, 2nd ed., p Poetry & Prose Behrendt, Stephen C. Shelley and His Audiences. Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, Brown, Nathaniel. Sexuality and Feminism in Shelley. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, Brown, Richard E. The Role of Dante in Epipsychidion. Comparative Literature 30 (1978): Dante Alighieri, Vita Nuova. Trans. Mark Musa. Oxford: Oxford UP, Everest, Kelvin. Shelley and His Contemporaries. The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ed. Michael O Neil and Anthony Howe. Oxford: Oxford UP, Guénon, René. The Esoterism of Dante. Tr. C. B. Bethell. Ghent, NY: Sophia Perennis et Universalis, Originally published in French in Leighton, Angela. Love, Writing and Scepticism in Epipsychidion. The New Shelley: Later Twentieth Century Views. Ed. G. Kim Blank. London: Macmillan, Reynolds, Barbara. Introduction. La Vita Nuova. By Dante Alighieri. Tr. Barbara Reynolds. Harmondsworth: Penguin, Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. II. Ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols. Ed. Frederick L. Jones. Oxford Clarendon P, The Poems of Shelley: Volume Four: Ed. Michael Rossington, Jack Donovan, and Kelvin Everest. London: Routledge, 2014.

14 80. The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Vol. 1. Ed. E. B. Murray. Oxford: Clarendon P, Shelley s Poetry and Prose, 2nd ed. Ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. New York: Norton, Ulmer, William Andrew. Shelleyan Eros: The Rhetoric of Romantic Love. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990.

Shelley and his Circle, Vol., p. 359 : Sir Gavin de Beer Liam Dunne The Elopement Trip

Shelley and his Circle, Vol., p. 359 : Sir Gavin de Beer Liam Dunne The Elopement Trip History of a Six Weeks Tour through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland: with Letters Descriptive of a Sail round the Lake of Geneva, and of the Glaciers of Chamouni History of a Six Weeks