This dissertation examines the role of sibling kinship in shaping the poetry, drama, and fiction of English Romanticism (1789-1832). While critics have long associated Romanticism with a myth of solitary authorship and an archetype of isolated genius, I demonstrate that Romantic authors imagined subjectivity in the plural, curating a vision of identity-formation that is collective, shared, multiple, and relational. Embodied in the portrayal of sibling relationships, this inter-subjective paradigm delivers new frameworks for understanding the Romantic self as situated within networks of others—networks of those who are not quite the same yet not quite different; those who are both familiar and yet unknown. My study is the first to present a sustained consideration of the way Romantic writers invoked literary siblinghood as a model for the collaborative and collective nature of selfhood, and I propose that this focus on lateral sibling kinship offers alternatives to the conventional reproductive lenses through which the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century family has been previously understood. Drawing from recent work in feminist and queer theory, psychology and psychoanalysis, and sociocultural histories of kinship, this dissertation contributes new readings of canonical texts by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Joanna Baillie, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, and Mary Shelley. Chapter One considers two stage dramas by P. B. Shelley and Baillie as rewritings of Sophocles’s Antigone. In both plays, sisters use their fraternal-sororal relations to redefine familial systems of reproduction via horizontal means of transmission rather than through vertical lines of biological inheritance. In Chapter Two, I extend this discussion of sibling networks to Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, where, I suggest, we find trans-subjective inter-relations that define the poet’s vision well beyond autobiographical references to his sister Dorothy. Austen’s novels serve as the focus of Chapter Three, which argues that the self-contained “I” of the Bildungsroman genre, as Austen incorporates it, in fact depends upon intimate epistemological exchanges between sororal characters who undergo a mutually influential process of development. Chapter Four concludes with a discussion of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I suggest that the author critiques her central male protagonist for his failures to recognize how the reciprocity of male-female sibling sympathies underlies homosocial bonds. Taken together, these readings advance a version of Romantic subjectivity based upon lateral integration rather than egotistical solipsism. / 2027-02-28T00:00:00Z

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It is the principal purpose of this study of the early criticisms of Shelley to contrast the opinions of him in England and America and to find reasons for the widely divergent attitudes of the reviewers in the two countries.

Feminist analyses of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein have yielded fruitful interpretations that make sense of what might otherwise be considered inessential details in the narrative. Specifically, the anxieties and politics of birth and motherhood have been brought forward as central concerns of the novel. However, given the influence of the liberal, Marxist, and radical strains of feminism in the period that laid the foundations of feminist Frankenstein scholarship (the 1960s-80s), most of this work has focused on the burdens of motherhood, the bonds of womanhood, or the oppressive structure of the family, in some cases accusing Shelley of offering a defense of patriarchy. These influential strains of feminism were themselves influenced by the most dominant theories in philosophical ethics, deontology and utilitarianism, both of which emerged from the same Enlightenment intelligentsia that included Shelley's parents, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. However, in the 1980s, a line of feminist inquiry began to yield an alternative to influential moral theories: the ethics of care. In contrast to the dominant theories, which tend to laud principle- or calculus-based ethical reasoning that assumes interchangeability of moral subjects, the ethics of care emphasises particular relationships and the fact that people are not interchangeable, having different vulnerabilities, dependencies, and dependents. Most importantly, care ethics accuses traditional ethics of ignoring children altogether, creating the illusion that the paradigmatic moral subject is neither dependent nor obligated in non-voluntary relationships. The ethics of care presents challenges for some strains of feminism, particularly in that it takes as given certain natural differences between all people in terms of abilities and circumstances rather than seek to eliminate such differences, and that it argues in favour of the same self-sacrificing values that many feminists have argued have contributed to women's oppression. Because of this dissent, I have decided to approach Frankenstein from the ethics of care, reading it as a criticism of the masculinist values and assumptions embedded in the emerging moral theories of Shelley's period. I will argue that Victor is emblematic of the detached individualistic ethical reasoner valued by masculinist theories and criticised by care ethicists. The Frankenstein family and the DeLaceys both provide examples of caring relations as contrasts to Victor's behaviour. The Creature, offspring of an incomplete moral theory, is both victim and perpetuator of masculinist individualistic, calculus-based moral reasoning. He is more aware than Victor of the necessity of caring relations, but he follows an ethic of retribution inspired by principle-based theories. He knows he needs a partner, but speaks of her in the language that Victor speaks of him—as property. The glimmer of hope in the novel lies with Walton, who, unlike Victor, is willing to engage in dialogue across difference, and finally to set his high aspirations aside for the well-being of his crew.

On the heels of an older generation of Romantic poets concerned with the individual’s role in creating reality, Percy Shelley defines perception as a mandatory building block for countering an external physical world that is hostile to the individual. Consequently, the question of perception, both how it is defined and how it can be influenced, plays an important role in Shelley’s works that focus on political and social change. The question of perception, as it relates to the individual and as it relates to social change, is brought to the forefront in Prometheus Unbound and his drama, The Cenci.

On the premise that examination of a poet's language can provide a valid and significant approach to the study of a work of art, this thesis proposes to make such a study of Prometheus Unbound, the major poetical work of Percy Bysshe Shelley, with specific attention to his use of color language.

This essay argued the importance of literary theory in the classroom. As a teacher, it is possible to achieve the empathetic goals of the English curriculum and Judith A. Langer’s ambition of literate thinking by using poetry and literary theory in school. The essay demonstrated this with a Lacanian reading of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poems “To a Skylark” and “Ode to the West Wind.” The analysis focused on readable and unreadable aspects of the poems. The readable aspects centred on the role of the Imaginary in “To a Skylark” and the representation of the fragmented body in “Ode to the West Wind.” Furthermore, the unreadable elements of the poetry demonstrated the discrepancy between the performative and declarative dimensions and the role of the pathetic fallacy in the signifying chain. Finally, this essay argued that, although all aspects of psychoanalytic literary theory should not be used in the classroom, elements of Lacanian thought can be used to combat the prevalence of individualism in Swedish upper secondary schools.

This essay challanges one of the worlds most famous horror story, Mary Shelley'sFrankenstein.Who is the monster in this novel? People know the story but they often tend to blend the two head characters, Victor Frankenstein and his creature. Based on the psychoanalysis, founded by Sigmund Freud, this essay argues that Victor Frankenstein is not the nice guy he seems to be. Appearances are not always what they seem and Victor Frankenstein turns into a "monster of the soul" due to suppressed feelings. His creature never stands a chance without any guidence and love. The creature is instead turned into a "monster of the body" since it is constantly badly treated from the start

Texte remanié de: Thesis Ph. D.--Durham, GB--University of Durham. / Notes bibliogr. Index.

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