THE SHELLEYS

David S. Miall. HC 4.67 Tel. 492-2236

"From the pleasant walks of the garden we see Vesuvius, a smoke by day & a fire by night is seen upon its summit, & the glassy sea often reflects its light or shadow." (P. B. Shelley, Letters (1964), II.60) [Graphic: Anon., "Der Vesuv"]

Course description

One of the best known relationships in literary history is that of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin with Percy Bysshe Shelley: their marriage took place in December 1816 and lasted until Percy drowned in July 1822. It was a relationship embodying some of the most significant tensions and paradoxes of its period: the voice of the woman subdued by the hieratical stance of the poet; the conflict of community with the realities of exile endured by the Shelleys in their last four years in Italy; the liabilities of childbearing alongside the philosophy of freedom (sexual and otherwise) espoused by Percy. The most important text reflecting their relationship, Frankenstein (1818), signals these, and other contemporary issues in coded form. The novel was heavily edited (not always for the better) by Percy, prior to its first publication; he also provided the Preface, as though he and not Mary were the author. In this course we will examine a range of works by Mary and Percy that reflect both the strengths and conflicts of their relationship and the culture of their time. These will include Mary's Frankenstein, Mathilda, The Last Man, and her preface to the posthumous edition of Percy's poetry; and a range of poetry and prose by Percy. Students are encouraged to read the letters and journals of both authors.

The resources available for the course include computer facilities in Tory B39: a hypermedia anthology of Romantic period literature and art (ed. Miall and Wu), and texts of some of the poetry and prose on the course that are available for text analysis. You will be shown how to make use of these facilities during several sessions in the lab. At various times, reports and additional information will be placed on this web page for the course. The web page also includes links to local and remote internet resources.

Here are links to the CNS pages for information on lab schedules: Tory B39. And follow this link for general information about the instructional computing labs on campus.

Texts required

The Mary Shelley Reader, ed. B. T. Bennett & C. E. Robinson (includes Frankenstein, 1818,
Mathilda) (Oxford)
Mary Shelley, The Last Man (Oxford)
Shelley's Poetry and Prose, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers (Norton). [This substitutes for the previously advertised collection edited by T. Webb, which was unavailable.]

Recommended:

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Norton)

See links to project reports in the left-hand column of the table. Links are also provided in the schedule on the day the project was presented.

Schedule (approximate)

Page numbers in normal text are from P. B. Shelley, ed. Reiman and Powers; page numbers in italics are from the Mary Shelley Reader. Asterisked titles are from the hypertext, ed. Miall & Wu (available in Tory B39).

Sept 5 Introductions

Sept 10/12 The background: Godwin, Wollstonecraft; the Shelleys /

politics; feminism; the Gothic; Letter to Godwin (455) 1812

Sept 17/19 Queen Mab VII.68-192 (53-6) 1813; Letters to P. B. Shelley (389-391) 1814;

Alastor (69) 1815

Sept 24/26 Arts Lab (Tuesday)

*History of a Six Weeks' Tour on Chamonix (also in part in Webb, 458)

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (93) 1816; Mont Blanc (89) 1816

Oct 1/3 Frankenstein 1818 (11)

Introduction to Frankenstein (167) 1831

Oct 8/10 Arts Lab (Tuesday)

*Reviews of Frankenstein, background documents; Frankenstein, cont.

Oct 15/17 Modern Italy (358) 1829

Stanzas written in Dejection . . . near Naples (127) 1818

*P. Shelley on Rome and Pompeii (Shelley in Italy, Map 1)

Julian and Maddalo (112) 1818

Project #1: Social construction of gender in Frankenstein (Margaret, Paul, Megan, Nicola). See report (updated 30 October 1996)

Oct 22/24 Arts Lab (Tuesday). No class on Thursday.

Oct 29/31 Mathilda (173) 1819-20

Prometheus Unbound (130) 1818-19

Projects: 29th: #2 Frankenstein: text and film (Marc, Mary Jane, Karina, Nelda). See report
31st: #3 A Cultural Studies Guide to Frankenstein (Laura, Jodie, Deena, Jill). See report
    -- #4 Nature and "Lines written among the Euganean Hills" and "Triumph of Life" (Sherene, Costas, Susan, Guy). See report

Nov 5/7 Prometheus Unbound, cont.

The Mask of Anarchy (301) 1819

Project #5: 5th, Frankenstein in Hollywood (Elke, Alan, Blaine, Colleen, Michelle). See report.

Nov 12/14 The Bride of Modern Italy (263) 1824; Epipsychidion (371) 1821

A Defence of Poetry (478) 1821

Project #6: 14th, Literary influences of Mary and Percy on each other (Lily, Christy). See report.

Evaluation of computer component -- see report.

Nov 19/21 The Triumph of Life (453) 1822 Essay due

Letter to Maria Gisborne (395) 1822; Letter to Leigh Hunt (403) 1823

Nov 26/28 Preface to the Poetical Works of Shelley (377) 1839

The Last Man 1826 -- see lecture notes; On Ghosts (334) 1824

Extracts from essays. Marking scale: see below.

26th: Project #7: "Epipsychidion" and "The Bride of Modern Italy" (James, Craig). See report
28th: Project #8: Prometheus (Dumi, Glenda, Soh, Christina) See report.

Dec 3 Retrospect / Revision

Dec 13, 9.00-11.00. Examination

Assignments

In addition to a final exam, there will be one essay and a short project report. Essays and reports, which should be typed, must be handed to me in person at the beginning of the class period at which they are due. Essays should under no circumstances be put under my office door, or given to another student to submit, or faxed to the Department. Late essays will only be accepted if valid medical or other reasons are presented in advance of the due date. An essay showing evidence of plagiarism will be awarded no marks, and the student concerned may face other penalties in addition. No essays can accepted or reconsidered after the final examination.

Project report (1000 words). 20%
Essay (3000 words) 50%. Due Nov 19
Examination, 30%

90-100% = 9
80-89% = 8
73-79% = 7
65-72% = 6
58-64% = 5
50-57% = 4 (pass)
46-49% = 3 (fail)

1. Project. Students will present a Project during a class time to be arranged. Normally the Project will be carried out with students working in groups of four. After presentation of a report in class (which may take the form of a poster display, verbal report, play, or hypertext document), each student will submit a short report (1000 words) on his or her own contribution to the Project within one week. The grade will reflect both the quality of the Project and the written report.

For guidance on projects, methods of study and presentation, see the Projects section of the Romanticism hypermedia in Tory B39.

2. Essay (3000 words). Students will choose their own essay topics. Essays will be expected to show some evidence of study of secondary sources (library, hypertext). The essay should not cover substantially the same ground as the Project to which you contributed.

NB. As an alternative to conventional printed form, students may wish to present their essays as hypertext documents on the Web. The essay as well as the Project report, could be presented this way, either singly, or in linked format. If you intend to do this, please study the instructions about setting up your own home page on the Proseminar course web page. A web essay could (optionally) also include graphics or diagrams, or links to other web sites.

For example hypertext essays (locally produced), see the home page of Paul Dyck, and my own hypertext essay on Coleridge's Ancient Mariner.

See sample home page for you to edit.

From my web site you can download a copy of HTML-Writer (the program we have used in the Tory lab) by clicking here; and a support file you also need: VBRUN300.dll. Then download pkunzip.exe, also from my web site, which will enable you to unzip the files. Download these three files to the same directory on your computer, then unzip each in turn. At MS-DOS level the commands are:

• pkunzip hw9b4all.zip
• pkunzip vbrun300.zip

Finally, in Windows, create a pathway to running the program and place its icon on your desktop, by calling the program up (New command in Windows 3.1; new shortcut in Windows 95). It is called htmlwrit.exe.

Reserve Room Reading

• Percy Bysshe Shelley, Letters, ed. Jones (Oxford, 1964). PR 5431 A3 1964 2 vols.
• Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Letters, ed. (John Hopkins UP, 1980). PR 5398 A4 1980 3 vols.
• Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Journals, ed. Feldman & Scott-Kilvert (Oxford, 1987). PR 5398 A3 1987. 1 vol only (Vol. 2 is missing)
• Ann Mellor, Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (Routledge, 1988). PR 5398 M527 1988.
• Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974). PR 5431 H75 1974.

Internet Resources

1. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley home page (Kim Woodbridge, Philadelphia). Basic overview, with primary focus on Frankenstein.
2. Resources for the study of Frankenstein (Martin Irvine, Georgetown University). Access to electronic texts of Frankenstein, information about film versions, and texts by Percy Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft.
3. Frankenstein File (David S. Miall, University of Alberta). Revisions of Frankenstein; extracts from reviews, background documents.
4. Frankenstein Annotated Bibliography (David S. Miall, University of Alberta). In progress.
5. Extracts from Letters and Journals of Mary Shelley (Nelson Hilton, U. Georgia).
6. Mary Shelley -- Percy Bysshe Shelley: Course (Stuart Curran, U Penn). See syllabus, questions for reflection, etc.
7. Percy Bysshe Shelley Chronology (Carl Stahmer, U California at Santa Barbara). Under construction, but already useful, with links to additional notes and references.
8. Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, up to The Cenci (Project Bartleby). Based on the Centenary Edition of Shelley's Poetical Works, 1892.
9. Pointers to the Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Vol. I: Shelley in England; Vol. II: Shelley in Italy (David S. Miall, University of Alberta). Selected letters indexed by page, date, topic, etc., in The Letters, ed. Jones (1964).
10. The Necessity of Atheism (Internet Infidels). Not the short original version of 1811, but the one revised for inclusion in the notes to Queen Mab (1813).
11. Percy Shelley's notes to Queen Mab (Stuart Curran, U Penn). Minus the Greek text.
12. Love and Marriage: Wollstonecraft, Godwin, and P. Shelley (David S. Miall, University of Alberta). Brief extracts. (See also Webb: Note to Queen Mab, p. 6; "On Love," p. 105.)
13. William Godwin archive (Dana Ward, Pitzer C., Claremont Colleges).
14. William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1798 text). (Dana Ward, Pitzer C., Claremont Colleges).
15. William Godwin page (Kim Woodbridge, Philadelphia). Overview of life.
16. Romantic Circles : specific focus on the Shelleys and Byron, but other writers also featured.
17. The Gothic: Materials for Study. Developed in a course led by Jerome J. McGann and Patricia Meyer Spacks, U Virginia.
18. The Literary Gothic (Jack G. Voller, Southern Illinois U. at Edwardsville). Information on authors, texts; access to resources.
19. Gothic Fiction course (David S. Miall, University of Alberta). Archived course materials, student reports.
20. The Voice of the Shuttle (Alan Liu, University of California at Santa Barbara). Internet links for all the humanities disciplines. For Romanticism studies in particular, go direct to the Romanticism page.
21. Canon-Formation and the Web. Panel discussion on Romanticism and the internet held at the MLA, December 1996.

Last updated Monday, January 18th 1999 (links refreshed)