© 2001 by Oxford University Press
Articles |
‘MONT BLANC’: TRANSCENDENCE IN SHELLEY'S RELATIONAL SYSTEM
Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences, Teacher Training University Tehran, Iran
Transcendence in its Platonic form in the works of Shelley is much discussed by students of the poet Lillian Winstanley's article ‘Platonism in Shelley’ (1913) represents one of the early attempts in this field Carl Grabo's The Magic Plant The Growth of Shelley's Thought (1936) represents an example of a Neoplatonic approach to Shelley's thought and philosophy. Carlos Baker in his Shelley's Major Poetry (1948) discusses Shelley's Platonism and empiricism James A Notopoulos's The Platonism of Shelley (1949) presents the most thorough research on the subject Notopoulos traces three kinds of Platonism in Shelley's thought natural, direct, and indirect Shelley's natural Platonism, he observes, comprises those Platonic elements that exist due to the operation of the poet's mind, untouched by the Platonic tradition The direct Platonism of Shelley is the result of his reading of Plato. And finally, Shelley's indirect Platonism is affected by his encyclopaedic reading of literature influenced by the Platonic tradition.
However, Shelley, I assume, differs from Plato in that he neither gives an ontological priority to the archetyes nor reduces the phenomenal beings to insubstantial shadows of the fixed entities Although he believes in trancendence and the existence of an ontological being, he considers both the world of archetypes, or the immanent Power, and the phenomenal as interdependent, dynamic and relational rather than ontological. Nevertheless his belief in the relational and interdependent existence does not bring him closer to the deconstructionists as he also assumes the existence of an ontological, imperceptible and transcendent being.