Shelley's Goddess

"Engaging....Her study can be highly original, and even at points enthralling....There is an unmistakable sense of daring, of risk, of passionate engagement in her writing which is impressive, and even moving."--The New York Review of Books "A fine coalescence of feminist criticism and interesting, sometimes brilliant, readings."--Edward Dramin, Iona College "Shelley's Goddess fearlessly contemporary in its demands on Shelley. Gelpi has produced what is today quite rare in mainline criticism, a work that attempts freshly to rethink an array of issues concerning Shelley from a contemporary intellectual's standpoint....From its just and accurate learning in eighteenth-century resources to its acute scrutiny of modern psychoanalytic constraints on the feminine, this study deserves accolades for range, originality, and insight."--Stuart Curran, University of Pennsylvania "Shelley's Goddess is an important feminist revision of a major canonical figure, of the cultural tradition that has inscribed literary criticism, and of that literary criticism itself. Gelpi's linkage of psychoanalytical, biographical, sociological, and historical approaches is thoughtful and timely. It both continues a tradition of feminist thought and breaks new ground. Her connection of the ideologies of the maternal and the aesthetic indeed has consequences for every possible area of human activity."--Laurie Langbauer, Swarthmore College "Barbara Gelpi's Shelley's Goddess is an extremely sophisticated analysis of the ideology of maternity as it developed both in the cultural discourse of eighteenth-century England and in modern psychoanalytic theory....Gelpi provides a fascinating and compelling account of the development of the eroticization of the mother...in eighteenth-century British society and in the Shelley household in particular."--Anne Mellor, University of California, Los Angeles "Engaging....Her study can be highly original, and even at points enthralling....There is an unmistakable sense of daring, of risk, of passionate engagement in her writing which is impressive, and even moving."--The New York Review of Books "A fine coalescence of feminist criticism and interesting, sometimes brilliant, readings."--Edward Dramin, Iona College "Shelley's Goddess fearlessly contemporary in its demands on Shelley. Gelpi has produced what is today quite rare in mainline criticism, a work that attempts freshly to rethink an array of issues concerning Shelley from a contemporary intellectual's standpoint....From its just and accurate learning in eighteenth-century resources to its acute scrutiny of modern psychoanalytic constraints on the feminine, this study deserves accolades for range, originality, and insight."--Stuart Curran, University of Pennsylvania "Shelley's Goddess is an important feminist revision of a major canonical figure, of the cultural tradition that has inscribed literary criticism, and of that literary criticism itself. Gelpi's linkage of psychoanalytical, biographical, sociological, and historical approaches is thoughtful and timely. It both continues a tradition of feminist thought and breaks new ground. Her connection of the ideologies of the maternal and the aesthetic indeed has consequences for every possible area of human activity."--Laurie Langbauer, Swarthmore College "Barbara Gelpi's Shelley's Goddess is an extremely sophisticated analysis of the ideology of maternity as it developed both in the cultural discourse of eighteenth-century England and in modern psychoanalytic theory....Gelpi provides a fascinating and compelling account of the development of the eroticization of the mother...in eighteenth-century British society and in the Shelley household in particular."--Anne Mellor, University of California, Los Angeles "Shelley's Goddess is an important, powerful, even revolutionary study of the poet and his response to the ideologies of motherhood in the early nineteenth century. It combines biography, close reading, source study, extensive historical research in primary documents, a sensitive use of psychoanalysis, and a rich, well-grounded feminist understanding--all to good effect. No one interested in Shelley, English Romanticism, or the gender-politics of that post-revolutionary time can afford to ignore this major book. It is by far the most important feminist reading of Shelley that we have."--Jerrold E. Hogle, University of Arizona "Gelpi's achievements are considerable and impressive....She significantly advances feminist criticism of Shelley....Shelley's Goddess is...a learned, important, and stimulating contribution to Shelley studies. It also provides a commanding model for any critic interested in rethinking romanticism historically."--South Atlantic Review "Provocative, eccentric, and aggressively argued....A fine resource for future inquiry."--Keats-Shelley Journal "She brilliantly interprets and evaluates Shelley's poetic drama Prometheus Unbound. She presents this study, as impressive in scholarship as in speculative risks, to aid that enterprise."--Southern Humanities Review "No reading of Shelley's text with which I am familiar has better succeeded in penetrating a highly vulnerable masculine subjectivity impaled upon its own fear of dissolution."--Studies in Romanticism