Repetition and death in Shelley's ‘Epipsychidion’

In response to the criticism frequently levelled against contemporary literary theory, that it disregards and devalues the literary text, this article attempts to show how post‐structuralism can feasibly be employed, vis‐a‐vis Shelley's ‘Epipsychidion’, as a strategy of reading literary texts without detracting from their enjoyment. The article first examines a few key concepts and their ramifications that together constitute the theoretical field in terms of which a post‐structuralist reading can be engaged in. While the concepts examined ‐ difference, displacement, desire, and figuration ‐ are common to most post‐structuralist writers, the importance given to, as well as the particular use of, a given concept naturally varies considerably. Having staked out the theoretical field in a necessarily cursory manner, the article offers a reading of ‘Epipsychidion’ that attempts to illustrate the poem's preoccupation with its own discursive mode. The reading attempts to show that although the poem endeavours to transcend its status as language and in so doing escape the limitations imposed on it, this endeavour must inevitably fail

Aesthetics · Art · Close reading · Criticism · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literary criticism · Literary theory · Literature · Poetry · Sociology · Computer Science · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Philosophy

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