Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here. This lecture is about the life and work of Percy Bysshe Shelley. I discuss Shelley’s scandalous life and fluctuating posthumous reputation, free love and its discontents, the dilemma of the “problematic” artist, the Romantic sonnet and the power of “Ozymandias,” Shelley as the self-selected inheritor of the literary tradition, the “league of incest” and the “Satanic School of Poetry,” Shelley as self-appointed Christ figure, Shelley’s elegy for Keats, Shelley’s Platonism, Shelley’s vision of the poet as passive wounded male God, Shelley’s death wish, Shelley’s Romantic manifesto and the poet as prophet, Shelley on the esoteric subtext of the poetic tradition, Shelley on poetry as against science and capitalism, and Mary Shelley’s Romantic novels as prophetic art. The first eight minutes are free to all. Please like, share, comment, subscribe—and please enjoy! The slideshow corresponding to the lecture is below the paywall.
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