{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/23637"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/23637","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Poet/censor/reader: Shelley's struggle for a popular reading audience","abstract":"\"One consequence of the anti-Jacobin fervor that swept England after 1789 was an increasingly aggressive machinery for the suppression of radical thinking and writing. Since it worked to excise any direct political criticism from public discourse, this baldly ideological censorship had a far-reaching (and often overlooked) influence on the forms of romantic literature. In fact, censorship is one of the key social forces which furthered the establishment of \"\"literature\"\" as a specifically \"\"imaginary\"\" discursive form concerned more with \"\"eternal Truths\"\" and \"\"ideals\"\" than with the muck and mire of real, historically contingent human affairs. Focusing primarily on Shelley's early works--Queen Mab, Alastor, and The Revolt of Islam--the dissertation explores the development of \"\"literature\"\" as exemplified by Shelley's poetic practice. Shelley's work offers an excellent text for such a study precisely because the writing is schizophrenic, sometimes commenting pointedly on contemporary social and political events and sometimes retreating to the remarkably obscure and highly imaginative forms often celebrated (or bemoaned) as Shelley's \"\"mythmaking.\"\" This discursive schizophrenia, I argue, is symptomatic of Shelley's effort to unite poetic and political discourses and to communicate his fundamentally social vision to a popular reading audience despite the dominant culture's efforts, through a rigorous press censorship, to stifle or contain such vocal opposition.\"","abstract_html":""One consequence of the anti-Jacobin fervor that swept England after 1789 was an increasingly aggressive machinery for the suppression of radical thinking and writing. Since it worked to excise any direct political criticism from public discourse, this baldly ideological censorship had a far-reaching (and often overlooked) influence on the forms of romantic literature. In fact, censorship is one of the key social forces which furthered the establishment of ""literature"" as a specifically ""imaginary"" discursive form concerned more with ""eternal Truths"" and ""ideals"" than with the muck and mire of real, historically contingent human affairs. Focusing primarily on Shelley's early works--Queen Mab, Alastor, and The Revolt of Islam--the dissertation explores the development of ""literature"" as exemplified by Shelley's poetic practice. Shelley's work offers an excellent text for such a study precisely because the writing is schizophrenic, sometimes commenting pointedly on contemporary social and political events and sometimes retreating to the remarkably obscure and highly imaginative forms often celebrated (or bemoaned) as Shelley's ""mythmaking."" This discursive schizophrenia, I argue, is symptomatic of Shelley's effort to unite poetic and political discourses and to communicate his fundamentally social vision to a popular reading audience despite the dominant culture's efforts, through a rigorous press censorship, to stifle or contain such vocal opposition."","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Grimes, Leonard Kyle"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Literature, English","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Stillinger, Jack"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2011,"date_issued":"2011-05-07T14:21:29Z","date_published":"2011-05-07T14:21:29Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:25:22Z","subjects":["Literature, English"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":["Copyright 1990 Grimes, Leonard Kyle"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["AAI9026195","(UMI)AAI9026195"],"render_values":[{"text":"AAI9026195","href":null,"code":true},{"text":"(UMI)AAI9026195","href":null,"code":true}]}]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/23637","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Stillinger, Jack"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Grimes, Leonard Kyle"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2011-05-07T14:21:29Z","10000-01-01","1990"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Literature, English"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Literature, English"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 1990 Grimes, Leonard Kyle"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["AAI9026195","(UMI)AAI9026195","http://hdl.handle.net/2142/23637"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["\"One consequence of the anti-Jacobin fervor that swept England after 1789 was an increasingly aggressive machinery for the suppression of radical thinking and writing. 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Shelley's work offers an excellent text for such a study precisely because the writing is schizophrenic, sometimes commenting pointedly on contemporary social and political events and sometimes retreating to the remarkably obscure and highly imaginative forms often celebrated (or bemoaned) as Shelley's \"\"mythmaking.\"\" This discursive schizophrenia, I argue, is symptomatic of Shelley's effort to unite poetic and political discourses and to communicate his fundamentally social vision to a popular reading audience despite the dominant culture's efforts, through a rigorous press censorship, to stifle or contain such vocal opposition.\"","Made available in DSpace on 2011-05-07T14:21:29Z (GMT). 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Since it worked to excise any direct political criticism from public discourse, this baldly ideological censorship had a far-reaching (and often overlooked) influence on the forms of romantic literature. In fact, censorship is one of the key social forces which furthered the establishment of \"\"literature\"\" as a specifically \"\"imaginary\"\" discursive form concerned more with \"\"eternal Truths\"\" and \"\"ideals\"\" than with the muck and mire of real, historically contingent human affairs. Focusing primarily on Shelley's early works--Queen Mab, Alastor, and The Revolt of Islam--the dissertation explores the development of \"\"literature\"\" as exemplified by Shelley's poetic practice. Shelley's work offers an excellent text for such a study precisely because the writing is schizophrenic, sometimes commenting pointedly on contemporary social and political events and sometimes retreating to the remarkably obscure and highly imaginative forms often celebrated (or bemoaned) as Shelley's \"\"mythmaking.\"\" This discursive schizophrenia, I argue, is symptomatic of Shelley's effort to unite poetic and political discourses and to communicate his fundamentally social vision to a popular reading audience despite the dominant culture's efforts, through a rigorous press censorship, to stifle or contain such vocal opposition.\"","Made available in DSpace on 2011-05-07T14:21:29Z (GMT). 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