Year of the Titan: Percy Bysshe Shelley and Ancient Poetry

Abstract

“Year of the Titan” examines the life and poetic career of Percy Bysshe Shelley from March 1818 to April 1819—a central turning point. It focuses on the Greek and Latin poetry that Shelley studied while composing Prometheus Unbound, and this poetry’s part in the creative process which culminated in his great “lyrical drama” (chs. I–V), his translation of Plato’s Symposium (ch. II), the Georgic-length conversation poem “Julian and Maddalo” (ch. III), the masterly lyric “Stanzas Written in Dejection” (ch. IV), and several other short works in verse and prose. These works cohere into a separable corpus—even (as it were) a single poem—centered around Prometheus and patterned after Classical themes, modes, and forms. This dissertation employs manuscript evidence, letters, journals, and the editions of ancient writers that Shelley possessed, in order to add an unprecedented comparative perspective to Shelley scholarship and to Romantic Studies.