Poetics of Self and Form in Keats and Shelley : Nietzschean Subjectivity and Genre

In focusing on the poetic treatment of self and literary form in Keats and Shelley, Mark Sandy shows how using Nietzsche''s philosophy to illuminate Keats''s correspondence and Shelley''s A Defence of Poetry provides a conceptual basis for a comparative reading of the poets. Using key ideas from Nietzsche, Sandy explores Keats''s Endymion and Shelley''s Alastor as redefinitions of the romance genre. Further, he suggests that in their redescription of romance, Keats and Shelley discovered a radical mode of subjectivity that is present in Keats''s major odes and Shelley''s lyrical poetry as a conflict among poetic identity, art, and existence. In Sandy''s reading, Shelley''s Adonais and Keats''s The Eve of St Mark emerge as diverse meditations on crises of posthumous reputation and future audience, whereas Keats''s Hyperion fragments and Shelley''s The Triumph of Life resolve these anxieties over authorial posterity by entrusting the reader with a new form of poetical self.

Beginning with a reassessment of contemporary romantic studies, this book provides a modern critical comparison of Keats and Shelley. The study offers detailed close readings of a variety of literary genres (including the romance, lyric, elegy and literary fragment) adopted by Keats and Shelley to explore their poetic treatment of self and form. The poetic careers of Keats and Shelley embrace a tragic affirmation of those darker elements latent in the earlier writings to meditate on their own posthumous reception and reputation. Fresh readings of Keats and Shelley show how they conceive of the self as fictional and anticipate Nietzsche''s modern theories of subjectivity. Nietzsche''s conception of the subject as a site of conflicting fictions usefully measures this emergent sense of poetic self and form in Keats and Shelley. This Nietzschean perspective enriches our appreciation of the considerable artistic achievement of these two significant second-generation romantic poets.