Poet/censor/reader: Shelley's struggle for a popular reading audience
Grimes, Leonard Kyle
This item is only available for download by members of the University of Illinois community. Students, faculty, and staff at the U of I may log in with your NetID and password to view the item. If you are trying to access an Illinois-restricted dissertation or thesis, you can request a copy through your library's Inter-Library Loan office or purchase a copy directly from ProQuest.
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/23637
Description
Title
Poet/censor/reader: Shelley's struggle for a popular reading audience
Author(s)
Grimes, Leonard Kyle
Issue Date
1990
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Stillinger, Jack
Department of Study
Literature, English
Discipline
Literature, English
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Literature, English
Language
eng
Abstract
"One consequence of the anti-Jacobin fervor that swept England after 1789 was an increasingly aggressive machinery for the suppression of radical thinking and writing. Since it worked to excise any direct political criticism from public discourse, this baldly ideological censorship had a far-reaching (and often overlooked) influence on the forms of romantic literature. In fact, censorship is one of the key social forces which furthered the establishment of ""literature"" as a specifically ""imaginary"" discursive form concerned more with ""eternal Truths"" and ""ideals"" than with the muck and mire of real, historically contingent human affairs. Focusing primarily on Shelley's early works--Queen Mab, Alastor, and The Revolt of Islam--the dissertation explores the development of ""literature"" as exemplified by Shelley's poetic practice. Shelley's work offers an excellent text for such a study precisely because the writing is schizophrenic, sometimes commenting pointedly on contemporary social and political events and sometimes retreating to the remarkably obscure and highly imaginative forms often celebrated (or bemoaned) as Shelley's ""mythmaking."" This discursive schizophrenia, I argue, is symptomatic of Shelley's effort to unite poetic and political discourses and to communicate his fundamentally social vision to a popular reading audience despite the dominant culture's efforts, through a rigorous press censorship, to stifle or contain such vocal opposition."
Use this login method if you
don't
have an
@illinois.edu
email address.
(Oops, I do have one)
IDEALS migrated to a new platform on June 23, 2022. If you created
your account prior to this date, you will have to reset your password
using the forgot-password link below.
