Percy Bysshe Shelley and the poetics of sympathy
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Date
07/11/2021Author
Null, Thomas
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Abstract
Ideas of sympathy are central to developments of Enlightenment moral and
political thought, as the discourse of sympathy negotiates tensions of the rational and
sentimental philosophical traditions. This thesis examines the development of P. B.
Shelley’s understanding of sympathy as a moral and political concept in the
intellectual history of his time.
This examination of the conceptual development of Shelleyan empathy, as a
practise of expansive sympathetic imagination that emerges in the poet’s writings,
contributes to an understudied area in the scholarship of Shelley and second-generation
British Romantics, in which the language and context of sympathy in contemporary
writings has not been addressed in a coherent account that brings critical attention to
texts alongside relevant developments in the history of ideas. Significantly, Shelley’s
vital engagement with the discourse of sympathy has not been considered as a
comprehensive and motivating force in his writings and intellectual development. This
gap in current scholarship obscures understanding of a key concept in Shelleyan
poetics, and overlooks productive readings of his work in poetry and the discourses of
sympathy and social reform.
The thesis situates a detailed examination of Shelley’s poetry and prose
writings within the history of ideas, with particular attention to his readings and
intellectual engagement with the literary and philosophical traditions in which his
thought participates. Close readings of major narrative poems, such as Queen Mab,
Alastor, Laon and Cythna, Peter Bell the Third, and Hellas: A Lyrical Drama, as well
as key essays in the poet’s thought, including A Defence of Poetry and A Philosophical
View of Reform, develop this examination of the intellectual context of Shelleyan
poetics and provide illustrations of its argument. Textual analysis demonstrates how
Shelley engaged with this context in his writings, from his influences by and
departures from the work of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers such as David Hume and
Adam Smith, his disagreements with the conservative post-Excursion poetics of first
generation British Romantic William Wordsworth as well as the reductive utilitarian
legacy of Jeremy Bentham, and his influence on Victorian era utilitarian philosopher
John Stuart Mill.
The thesis argues for the significance of Shelley’s extensive engagement with
contemporary philosophical discussions of sympathy and related ideas in readings of
his work. By tracing the conceptual development of Shelleyan empathy the thesis
demonstrates a new kind of intellectual genealogy for the poet’s wider aesthetic
project, connecting the concept of expansive sympathetic imagination Shelley
develops in his writings with the potential of an alternative course to social
improvement that attempts to redeem the non-reductive aspects of the utilitarian
tradition.