Afterword

ABSTRACT

This afterword begins by taking the final line of Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” as a motif in order to consider (1) the fate of revolutionary hopes now over two centuries old and (2) categories such as “winter” and “spring” which have been altered as a consequence of climate change. There is brief mention of the various identities that have been ascribed to Shelley in the 200 years since his death before the afterword touches on the prospects for literary critics and scholars today.

Notes

1 Shelley’s poetry (with the exception of “The Triumph of Life”) is quoted from this edition and cited by line (and act where present). For information on the circumstances of the composition and publication of “Ode to the West Wind,” see Poems (4: 200–03).

2 Compare, for example, F. H. Ludlam.

3 See D’Arcy Wood; Higgins.

4 “As Marx, who understood the poets as well as he understood the philosophers and economists, was wont to say: ‘The real difference between Byron and Shelley is this: those who understand them and love them rejoice that Byron died at thirty-six, because if he had lived he would have become a reactionary bourgeois; they grieve that Shelley died at twenty-nine, because he was essentially a revolutionist, and he would always have been one of the advanced guard of Socialism’” (Aveling and Marx Aveling 183).