Shelley's Visual Imagination [Paperback]

First full-length study of Shelley's remarkable notebooks and the visual and textual imagination they reveal.This first full-length study of Shelley's remarkable notebooks shows how important illustrations, sketches and drafts were to the creative process of his published poems. Nancy Goslee explores the notebooks, the visual and textual imagination they reveal, and the wider implications for an understanding of the creative process of Romantic poets.This first full-length study of Shelley's remarkable notebooks shows how important illustrations, sketches and drafts were to the creative process of his published poems. Nancy Goslee explores the notebooks, the visual and textual imagination they reveal, and the wider implications for an understanding of the creative process of Romantic poets.Shelley's drafts and notebooks, which have recently been published for the first time, are very revealing about the creative processes behind his poems, and show  through illustrations and doodles  an unexpectedly vivid visual imagination which contributed in a major way to the effect of his poetry. Shelley's Visual Imagination analyzes both verbal script and visual sketches in his manuscripts to interpret the lively personifications of concepts such as 'Liberty', 'Anarchy', or 'Life' in his completed poems. Challenging the persistent assumption that Shelley's poetry in particular and Romantic poetry more generally reject the visual for expressive voice or music, this study combines criticism with a focus upon bibliographic codes and iconic pages. The product of years of study, this much-anticipated book will be of great value for all students of Shelley.1. Introduction: text and figure; 2. Mab's metamorphoses; 3. 'Hymn to intellectual beauty': visual texts, invisible figure; 4. 'Clear elemental shapes': textual and cultural origins for liberty in the Laon and Cythna notebooks; 5. Anarchy's textual progress: representing liberty; 6. Pursuing revision in Shelley's 'Ode to LibertylC)