Percy Bysshe Shelley and the poetics of sympathy

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.