The Reception of P. B. Shelley in Europe

Description

The widespread and culturally significant impact of Percy Bysshe Shelley's writings in Europe constitutes a particularly interesting case for a reception study because of the variety of responses they evoked. If radical readers cherished the 'red' Shelley, others favoured the lyrical poet, whose work was, like Byron's, anthologized and set to music. His major dramatic works, The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound, inspired numerous fin-de-siecle and expressionist dramatists and producers from Paris to Moscow. Shelley was read by, and influenced, the novelist Stendhal, the political theorist Engels, the Spanish symbolist Jimenez, and the Russian modernist poet Akhmatova. This exciting collection of essays by an international team of leading scholars considers translations, critical and biographical reviews, fictionalizations of his life, and other creative responses. It probes into transnational cross-currents to demonstrate the depth of Shelley's impact on European culture since his death in 1822. It will be an indispensable research resource for academics, critics, and writers with interests in Romanticism and its legacies.

Susanne Schmid has taught at the universities of FU Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Princeton, Paderborn, Salford and Regensburg. She is the author of Shelley's German Afterlives 1814 - 2000 (2007). Michael Rossington is Senior Lecturer in Romantic Literature in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University, UK. He is one of the editors of The Poems of Shelley, Vol. 3 (2009). Elinor Shaffer, FBA is author of 'Kubla Khan' and The Fall of Jerusalem: The Mythological School in Biblical Criticism and Secular Literature, and many articles on English and European Romanticism, and most recently co-editor of The Reception of S.T. Coleridge in Europe.

Briefly reviewed in the Year's work in English Studies journal, vol 89, No. 1 '[A] volume that excitingly probes Shelley's reception in a dizzyingly broad range of languages, from Catalan and Greek to Bulgarian and Romanian.' 'The successive essays cover an unexpectedly inclusive variety of national situations, and repeatedly demonstrates the power of Shelley's different received images...to embody different aspects of cultural crisis.' -- Romantic Studies Bulletin and Review 'This is a fascinating book with a wonderful range of afterlives and countries.' -- The Keats-Shelley Review 'The book under review, which is the sixteenth volume of the valuable series on "The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe" is, therefore, a welcome edition to Shelley's scholarship... The timeline alone is an indispensible tool, as well as being the scaffolding for the rest of the book.' -- The Keats-Shelley Journal ... this new publication in the meritorious series is to be highly welcomed in the field of both Romantic Studies and comparative literature... In view of the gigantic task and the bewildering richness of names, titles and historical facts one cannot but congratulate the editors and contributors on their careful work. -- Archiv After seventeen volumes on the European-wide reception of Ossian, Byron, Coleridge, Wilde, Darwin, Lawrence, and other British and Irish authors in Britain and on the Continent, this new publication in the meritorious series is to be highly welcomed in the field both of Romantic studies and comparative literature. -- Archiv