Shelley's Goddess: Maternity, Language, SubjectivityOxford University Press, 1992 M10 29 - 336 pages The subject of Gelpi's new book is the importance of the mother-infant relationship in Percy Bysshe Shelly's poetry and life. However, her book also uses Shelley as a touchstone by which to examine the rich historical and theoretical issues relevant to motherhood in the Romantic period. Gelpi offers a detailed account of the historical rise in attention paid to mothering, the changing cultural attitudes towards the role of the mother, and the resulting effect on the nature of family life. She further discusses the psychoanalytic, Marxist, and developmental approaches to the mother/infant relationship, particularly to the connection each makes between that relationship and the acquisition of language. By combining psychoanalytic, poststructuralist and feminist theory with extensive biographical material on Shelley and information on the position of mothers in England after 1790, Gelpi offers an important reassessment of Shelley's avowed feminism and the failure of his utopian vision. |
Other editions - View all
Shelley's Goddess: Maternity, Language, Subjectivity Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi Limited preview - 1992 |
Shelley's Goddess: Maternity, Language, Subjectivity Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi No preview available - 1992 |
Common terms and phrases
Aeschylus aesthetic allusion analysis Asia Asia's author's emphasis becomes breasts Bysshe cave child concept consciousness context Countess of Harrington created Delphi Demogorgon describes desire Dionysus discussion dramatic dream Dumuzi Earth echoes effect Elizabeth Shelley erotic experience fantasy father female feminine Field Place function gaze gender gives Greek Harriet Hogg human ideology imagined infant interaction introjection Jupiter Jupiter's Jupiterean Lacan Lacanian Lady's Magazine language letter lines male Mary Mary Godwin Mary Shelley masculine maternal metaphor metonymic mind mirror Mother Goddess nature notes nurse Oceanides Oedipus Panthea passage Pausanias phrase Pilfold possible presence Prome Promethean Prometheus Unbound reading relationship ritual scene semiotic sense serves sexual Shel Shelley's signifier sister social soul speech spirit Stern subjectivity suggests symbolic Tammuz theory theus thou thought Timothy Shelley tion woman women words writes Zeus