The Human Mind's Imaginings: Conflict and Achievement in Shelley's Poetry

This book argues that Percy Shelley's developing capacity to accommodate and explore conflict lies at the heart of his poetic achievement. Focusing particularly on the poetry's language, tones, and imaginative life, O'Neill offers lucid and original readings of Alastor, "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" and "Mont Blanc", Julian and Maddalo, The Cenci, Prometheus Unbound, The Witch of Atlas, Epipsychidion, and The Triumph of Life. Throwing fresh light on the experience of reading Shelley, the book is a sympathetic yet discriminating discussion of a poet who has too often been the object of uncritical admiration or automatic dislike.