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Palgrave Macmillan

Romantic Paganism

The Politics of Ecstasy in the Shelley Circle

  • Book
  • © 2017

Overview

Authors:
  1. Suzanne L. Barnett

    1. Francis Marion University, Florence, USA

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  • Addresses, for the first time, the role played by a specifically wild and ecstatic paganism (as opposed to “Hellenism” or “classicism”) in British Romanticism
  • Explores the idea that the Shelley circle self-consciously adopts paganism as a symbolic embrace of chaos
  • Makes groundbreaking use of the younger romantics’ journals and correspondence

Part of the book series: The New Antiquity (NANT)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
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  2. Introduction: Pretty Paganisms and Satanic Schools

    • Suzanne L. Barnett
    Pages 1-23

  3. “The Wrecks of the Greek Mythology”: Paganism, Popishness, Atheism, and Decadence in the Eighteenth Century

    • Suzanne L. Barnett
    Pages 25-84

  4. “Cheerfulness and a Sense of Justice”: Dionysus, Nympholepsy, and the Religion of Joy

    • Suzanne L. Barnett
    Pages 85-133

  5. “Prattling about Greece and Rome”: Paganism, Presumption, and Gender

    • Suzanne L. Barnett
    Pages 135-166

  6. “The Great God Pan is Alive Again”: Peacock and Shelley in Marlow

    • Suzanne L. Barnett
    Pages 167-213

  7. Shelley’s “Perpetual Orphic Song”: Music as Pagan Ideology in Prometheus Unbound

    • Suzanne L. Barnett
    Pages 215-271

  8. Afterword: The Afterlives of Romantic Paganism

    • Suzanne L. Barnett
    Pages 273-283

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 285-305
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Keywords

About this book

This book addresses the function of the classical world in the cultural imaginations of the second generation of romantic writers: Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Thomas Love Peacock, John Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the rest of their diverse circle. The younger romantics inherited impressions of the ancient world colored by the previous century, in which classical studies experienced a resurgence, the emerging field of comparative mythography investigated the relationship between Christianity and its predecessors, and scientific and archaeological discoveries began to shed unprecedented light on the ancient world. The Shelley circle embraced a specifically pagan ancient world of excess, joy, and ecstatic experiences that test the boundaries between self and other. Though dubbed the “Satanic School” by Robert Southey, this circle instead thought of itself as “Athenian” and frequently employed mythology and imagery from the classical world that was characterized not by philosophy and reason butby wildness, excess, and ecstatic experiences.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Francis Marion University, Florence, USA

    Suzanne L. Barnett

About the author

Suzanne L. Barnett is Assistant Professor of English at Francis Marion University in South Carolina, USA.

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