Wild plants and wild passions in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poems for Jane Williams
(2021) In Routledge Environmental Literature, Culture and Media p.91-109- Abstract
Much has been written about Percy Bysshe Shelley’s engagement with different aspects of natural philosophy in his poetry and prose. But Shelley’s interest in plants and botany has yet to receive sustained attention. This chapter focusses on the representation of wildness in what it defines as Shelley’s botanical poetry: poems which not only have a plant as their ostensible subject, or which develop extended plant imagery, but which also engage, either explicitly or implicitly, with contemporary botanical discourses and practices. The chapter focusses, in particular, on the role of wild plants in the poems that Shelley wrote for Jane Williams, or with her in mind, during the last six months of his life, including comparatively... (More)
Much has been written about Percy Bysshe Shelley’s engagement with different aspects of natural philosophy in his poetry and prose. But Shelley’s interest in plants and botany has yet to receive sustained attention. This chapter focusses on the representation of wildness in what it defines as Shelley’s botanical poetry: poems which not only have a plant as their ostensible subject, or which develop extended plant imagery, but which also engage, either explicitly or implicitly, with contemporary botanical discourses and practices. The chapter focusses, in particular, on the role of wild plants in the poems that Shelley wrote for Jane Williams, or with her in mind, during the last six months of his life, including comparatively little-known works like “The Zucca” and the so-called “Unfinished Drama.” These poems, the chapter suggests, take up and transform the tropes of contemporary botanical discourse in order to forge links between different kinds and modes of wildness, between the wildness of nature and the wildness of human emotions. The anthropomorphic analogies at their core set these poems apart, the chapter concludes, from Shelley’s more familiar writing about nature, which tends conversely to emphasize the ontological distinctness of the natural world.
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- author
- Duffy, Cian LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2021-01
- type
- Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
- publication status
- published
- subject
- host publication
- Wild Romanticism
- series title
- Routledge Environmental Literature, Culture and Media
- editor
- Poetzsch, Markus and Falke, Cassandra
- pages
- 19 pages
- publisher
- Routledge
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85109620406
- scopus:85109610755
- ISBN
- 9780367496722
- 9780367496746
- 9781000380361
- DOI
- 10.4324/9780367496746-7
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- c5e902d7-b8fc-4489-98b0-94517909376e
- date added to LUP
- 2020-03-25 11:39:21
- date last changed
- 2024-04-17 05:54:02
@inbook{c5e902d7-b8fc-4489-98b0-94517909376e,
abstract = {{<p>Much has been written about Percy Bysshe Shelley’s engagement with different aspects of natural philosophy in his poetry and prose. But Shelley’s interest in plants and botany has yet to receive sustained attention. This chapter focusses on the representation of wildness in what it defines as Shelley’s botanical poetry: poems which not only have a plant as their ostensible subject, or which develop extended plant imagery, but which also engage, either explicitly or implicitly, with contemporary botanical discourses and practices. The chapter focusses, in particular, on the role of wild plants in the poems that Shelley wrote for Jane Williams, or with her in mind, during the last six months of his life, including comparatively little-known works like “The Zucca” and the so-called “Unfinished Drama.” These poems, the chapter suggests, take up and transform the tropes of contemporary botanical discourse in order to forge links between different kinds and modes of wildness, between the wildness of nature and the wildness of human emotions. The anthropomorphic analogies at their core set these poems apart, the chapter concludes, from Shelley’s more familiar writing about nature, which tends conversely to emphasize the ontological distinctness of the natural world.</p>}},
author = {{Duffy, Cian}},
booktitle = {{Wild Romanticism}},
editor = {{Poetzsch, Markus and Falke, Cassandra}},
isbn = {{9780367496722}},
language = {{eng}},
pages = {{91--109}},
publisher = {{Routledge}},
series = {{Routledge Environmental Literature, Culture and Media}},
title = {{Wild plants and wild passions in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poems for Jane Williams}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780367496746-7}},
doi = {{10.4324/9780367496746-7}},
year = {{2021}},
}