Shelley and Vitality

Ruston (English literature, U. of Wales-Bangor) examines how poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), like other English Romantic writers, reflected and engaged in the philosophical and scientific search for the principle of life. She discusses such aspects as the role of materialism and atheism in the debate, scientist Humphry Davy, Shelley's knowledge of the science of life, the political body in Prometheus Unbound, defining life in The Painted Veil, and his use of the theories and vocabulary of the vitality debate as a metaphor for poetic and aesthetic ideas. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR