Romantic Epic - Percy Shelley Laon and Cyntha

Kevin Saylor - new epic for more inward age

2018 - ‘a new epic model was needed for this unprecedented new age’

William Hayley ‘Essay of Epic Poetry’ 1782 - the east

‘Eastern riches are unrifled still’

date of Percy Shelley’s Laon and Cyntha/The Revolt of Islam

1817 - 2 cantos

republished 1818 as ‘the revolt of islam’ - makes Cyntha Laon’s adoptive rather than biological sister, replaces the name of God with circumlocutions, exchanges specific references on atheism with more general remarks on moral courage.

Who are Loan and Cyntha

inhabitants of Argolis under Ottoman rule, initiate revolutions against despotic ruler

What events does the epic respond to

symbolic parable on liberation and revolutionary idealism following disillusionment of french revolution

What does Shelley suggest he encourages his reader towards in the preface to Laon and Cyntha

‘doctrines of liberty and justice … faith and hope in something good.’

WHat is the central emphasis on L+C

peaceful revolution that doesnt involve bloodshed - uncertainty about what can be achieved through persuasive language, stopping people analysing things critically.

Michael O’Niell - sexual freedom and poetry

2010 - ‘sexual freedom mirrors poetic daring, a daring at the heart of the poem’s reappropriation of epic’

How does L+C open

with an unnamed female speaker looking out over the sea - sees serpent and eagle fighting. meets Loan and Cyntha - Laon as poet narrator.

Explain the meanings of the serpent and the flame

Woman on beach with the serpent - explains the serpent as the spirit of God cursed to be reptile by the eagle, the spirit of evil (ironic use of Jove and roman empire)

Spirit of evil = absolutism, wickedness - causes suffering by introducing world to religion, war, money, monarchy. Spirit of good = Satan, like Prometheus, enemy of God but friend of man.

Taking symbols from Iliad and Aeneid but reversing normal associations. snake association with morning star - S as hero in struggle against tyranny. eagle = jove’s imperial bird. Eagle aligns with blood red comet – fiery comet Jupiter sends in response to Anchises’ prayer for sign in Aeneid B2. PS revises JM by making violence rather than disobedience the original sin, inverts V by making imperial eagle and providential comet symbols of dark forces.

Manichaean dualism. Opening canto’s image of eagle and serpent through cataclysmic social revolution and counterrevolution in cantos v and vi to concluding moral conflict Laon and Iberian Priest. PS’ narrative dominated by opposition forces of Good or love and forces of evil or hate.

WHat is the influence of Wollstonecraft over the epic

Suggestions that Wollstonecraft is the unidentified woman in the first canto

Cyntha’s rhetoric liberally imported from the second vindication

Cyntha persuades Laon that patriarchal oppression of women is an essential feature of political despotism.

What is the influence of James Lawrence’s Empire of the Nairs 1811 on Shelley

about a gynocritic society on SW coast of India - no such thing as marriage and women take as many lovers as desire.

Cyntha as prophetess and leader of revolt modelled on story of Samora, founded of Nair kingdom

How is Laon and Cyntha antifeminist

Subjects Cyntha to rape that is mystical source of political power - how PS balances horror of Cyntha’s assault with suggestion that if it didnt take place she wouldnt have been able to lead revolution.

suggests the followers of Mohammed greatest offenders against female liberty.

Orientalism in L+C

Othman!

Laon and Cyntha unmarked by language of race and ethnicity - liberation of women depends on imperial domination.

feminism comes against the orient.

How does Shelley transform elements of the Aeneid

Cyntha playing a role opposite to Dido - not female impediment to male hero’s performance of duty but a hero of equal status.

priests feigning madness and rushing through ranks inspiring hysteria - 10th canto = suggest Amata leading women of Laurentum into bacchic frenzy.

What does L+C celebrate America as

a potential model for revolutionary change

Shelley and concerns with epic monumentality

letter to William Godwin, 11 December 1817 – “resolved to leave some record of myself … I felt that it was in many respects a genuine picture of my own mind”