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A question re: Percy Bysshe Shelley
Apr. 25th, 2006 08:08 amCan anyone explain to me why we study Percy Bysshe Shelley as anything more than a minor Romantic poet and the husband of the author of Frankenstein?
There is no irony in my question. I dislike the Romantics (for values of "dislike" ranging from "am bored by" to "loathe"), so I'm well aware that I am not best positioned to see PBS's merits. And I am feeling particularly uncharitable toward him at the moment because I'm reading Anne K. Mellor's book on Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and have gotten to the part where PBS's self-centered, selfish, callous thoughtlessness is partly responsible for the death of their daughter Clara Everina and where PBS proves himself TOTALLY INCAPABLE of understanding why MWS has gone off him a bit in consequence.
So, yeah, my fondness for P. B. Shelley, never great to begin with, is currently at its all time low.
Byron was just as bad in his private life (possibly worse, although there we have to get into comparative ethics and well, let's not go there), but I do understand why he's part of the Western canon--I get it. I even--sort of--get Wordsworth, much though he bores me until my eyeballs roll back in their sockets.
But what is there about Shelley that makes him worth discussing?
There is no irony in my question. I dislike the Romantics (for values of "dislike" ranging from "am bored by" to "loathe"), so I'm well aware that I am not best positioned to see PBS's merits. And I am feeling particularly uncharitable toward him at the moment because I'm reading Anne K. Mellor's book on Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and have gotten to the part where PBS's self-centered, selfish, callous thoughtlessness is partly responsible for the death of their daughter Clara Everina and where PBS proves himself TOTALLY INCAPABLE of understanding why MWS has gone off him a bit in consequence.
So, yeah, my fondness for P. B. Shelley, never great to begin with, is currently at its all time low.
Byron was just as bad in his private life (possibly worse, although there we have to get into comparative ethics and well, let's not go there), but I do understand why he's part of the Western canon--I get it. I even--sort of--get Wordsworth, much though he bores me until my eyeballs roll back in their sockets.
But what is there about Shelley that makes him worth discussing?
