Published February 12, 2026 | Version v1
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A Study on Shelley's Myth Making Art in the Poems Alastor and Queen Mab

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  • 1. Department of English F.S.University Shikohabad UP (India)

Description

The purpose of present paper is to deal with myth making art in Shelley’s poem’s Alastor and Queen Mab. In the Introduction to C.D. Locock’s edition of Shelley’s Poems1 A. Clutton-Brook begins his assessment of Shelley’s poetry with a censure. Disapproving the merit of Shelley’s early works, he observes: Shelley has often been praised as a poet rather for what he attempted than for what he accomplished. He was, perhaps, the most ambitious of all our great poets; especially in his earlier years, when he had little understood of the nature of his own powers or even of the proper functions of poetry. Then he regarded poetry as a kind of maid-of-all-work to be set to any task that his enthusiasms might suggest.2

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2026-02-12
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References

  • 1. C.D. Locock, ed., The Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. I, (Methuen, London, 1911). 2. Ibid., Introduction, p.v. 3. The proof of this fact is that some such poems of Shelley as Mont Blanc are usually neglected even by those critics who claim that their studies are complete and exhaustive. 4. Shelley's Major Poetry (Russell & Russell, N. York, 1961), p. 5. 5. R.A. Foakes, The RomanticAssertion, (Methuen, Lond., 1958), p. 9. 6. They have always seen used to prove that Shelley was a disciple of Godwin, Holbach, Hume, or Berkeley, but never to prove that Shelley was preparing to be what he later became, a mythmaker. 7. Written 1812-13 and published 1813. 8. Shaw called it a perfectly original poem on a great subject. Quoted by Baker in Shelley's major Poetry, p. 38. 9. Campbell, Shelley and the Unromantics, (Methuen, 1924), p.114. 10. D. Bush, Mythology and the Romantic Tradition, pp. 133-34. 11. Written and published 1815. 12. A.M.D. Hughes, Alastor, Or The Spirit of Solitude, in Modern Language Review, Vol. 43, (1948), p. 30. 13. Shelley and the Unromantics, p. 188. 14. Hutchinson, ed. The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley's, (O.U.P., Lond., 1956) pp. 14, 15. 15. As King-Hele remarks, as a rule, the soul's shining core is, as Shelley pute it veiled, Shelley: His Thought and Work, (Macmillan, N. York, 1960), p. 57. 16. Campbell is not pleased with the fleshly woman. The woman, she says, "who should have been but a symbol of the soul's desire steps out of the land of imagery like some scantily dressed beauty of a society ball". Shelley and the Unromantics, (Methuen, Lond., 1924), p. 190. 17. 'Nature's vast frame' is an important aspect of Shelley's later myths. 18. R.D. Havens, Shelley's 'Alastor in PMLA, Vol. XLV (1930), pp. 1103, 1108, 1109. 19. H.L. Hoffman, An Odyssey of the Soul: Shelley's Alastor, (Columbis Univ. Prese, N. York, 1933)., p. 3. 20. Quoted by Locock, ed., p. 537. 21. Alastor, says J.L. De Palacio, "is the poem of a void and vacant world; its poetry is the poetry of emptiness in which no voice is heard but a dim reverberation when Nature is bandying echoes with the mountains and rocks". Music and Musical Themes in Shelley's Poetry, in MLR, Vol. 59, (1964), p. 346. 22. Shelley's Major Poetry, p. 53. 23. Milton Wilson, Shelley's Later Poetry, (Columbia Univ. Press, 1959), p. 8. 24. Most of the critics believe that Alastor is partially autobiography. Some have based their interpretation on the condition of Shelley's mind in 1815. Shelley's growing interest in Wordsworth and Coleridge is a much-discussed subject. Paul Mueschke and Lealie Griggs, for example, find Wordsworth as the prototype of the Poet in Alastor. "Wordsworth as the Prototype of the Poet in Shelley's Alastor, PMLA, XXIX (1934), pp. 229-45. Joseph. Ralen considers, not Wordsworth, but Coleridge as the prototype of Shelley's Poet. Alastor should be read, he says, "as an allegorical narrative of Coleridge's fate". He seems to be thinking that Shelley was trying to see himself in the image of Coleridge. "Coleridge as the Prototype of the Poet in Shelley' Alastor, RES, Vol. 17, Number 67 (August, 1966), pp. 278-292. 25. Shelley: His Thought and Work, p. 60. 26. Shelley and the Unromantics, p. 191. 27. Wilson Knight, The Starlit Deme, (O.U.P., 1943), p. 187. 28. Shelley and the Unromantics, p.190. 29. Symonds says that Alastor has a vein of unhealthy sentiment, Shelley, (E.M.L., 1887), p. 86. 30. The volume was entitled Alastor : or The Spirit of Solitude and other Poems which included, besides Alastor, eleven other poems of which the most famous are To Wordsworth, The moon is dark…. and the poem influenced by Gray's elegy called A Summer Evening Churchyard. 31. Letter to Robert Southey dated March 7, 1816. Ingpen, ed. The Letters of Percy Byssha Shelley, (G. Bell, Lond., 1914), Vol. I, p. 471.