Approaches to Teaching Shelley's Poetry

Shelley's poetry, admits Steven E. Jones in the Keats-Shelley Journal, has proved "difficult to study and to teach well." The essays in Approaches to Teaching Shelley's Poetry confront the problem of introducing Shelley in the classroom and propose a variety of techniques for engaging students with Shelley's extraordinary stylistic and conceptual variety. Like other books in the MLA's Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, this one is divided into two parts. The first part, "Materials," evaluates teacher and reference editions of Shelley's works and surveys secondary readings for both students and instructors. The second part, "Approaches," contains thirty-two concise and practical essays on teaching the poetry. Six essays discuss pedagogical issues, including teaching Shelley to sophomores and in writing-across-the-curriculum courses. The longest section of the book comprises eighteen essays on presenting individual texts, from reading Adonais as pastoral elegy to teaching Alastor and Prometheus Unbound alongside Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Essays on specific literary and historical contexts and on critical perspectives, including a feminist reading of Shelley's works and strategies for teaching Shelley with other Romantic poets, complete the volume.