Shelley's Unknown Eros
Post-Secular Love in Epipsychidion
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4314646 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Tomko (0000-0002-3641-5430, Villanova University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 9 |
| Pages | 118 |
| Publication date | 2016-09-14 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/rel7090118 |
| OpenAlex | W2519737851 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 22 |
Whether Percy Bysshe Shelley's Epipsychidion-a Platonic poem on love addressed to the patriarchally imprisoned Theresa Viviani or "Emily"-receives praise or blame has generally been determined by two focal passages: a secular sermon on free love and a planetary allegorical thinly veiling his own imbroglio. This essay re-reads Shelley's 1821 work drawing on two recent arguments: Stuart Curran's Dantean call to take the poem's Florentine narrator seriously as a character, not just as an autobiographical cypher, and Colin Jager's outline of Shelley's move beyond the assumptions of his professed atheism after 1816. Based on the poem's structure and imagery, the paper argues that Epipsychidion critiques the false sense of revolutionary ascent and dualistic escape offered to Emily, who is commodified and erased by the narrator's egocentric, "counterfeit divinization of eros" (Benedict XVI). Turning from this Radical Enlightenment Platonism, the poem momentarily realizes an embodied, hylomorphic romantic union akin to the Christian nuptial mystery of two becoming "one flesh" (Mark 10:8). This ideal, however, collapses back into solipsism when the narrator cannot understand or accept love as a "unity in duality" (Benedict XVI). This paper thus claims Epipsychidion as a post-secular inquiry into the problem of love whose philosophic limits and theological horizons are both surprising and instructive. It also reclaims Shelley as a phenomenological poet who can open up the world to Christian and non-Christian readers, one whose Platonic and Dantean formation lend him an openness to transcendence and one whose countercultural path through life makes him wary of inhumane appropriations of religion
Aesthetics · Art · Atheism · Literature · Poetry · Romance · Sublime · Theology · Verisimilitude · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Philosophy
The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 1: Shelley in England
The Circle of Our Vision
Shelley’s Italian Experience
Shelley
Romantic Androgyny
The Platonism of Shelley
Religious Trends in English Poetry
Radical Enlightenment
Coherence and Collapse in Shelley, with Particular Reference to Epipsychidion
Evaluating Shelley
Medwin's Conversations of Lord Byron
| Highly cited | No |
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