Percy Shelley, Alive
Romantic Textualities
“It is something we do in any case, casting and recasting arguments from an increasing number of unique, sometimes obscure, angles, refracting the light, turning what might have been telescopes—a way of bringing something far off and lovely across the boundaries of time, place, genre or identity, into our newly resplendent ken—into kaleidoscopes: pretty, interesting but useless as navigational aids.”
Willett, M., 2020. Book Review - Ross Wilson, Shelley and the Apprehension of Life (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780–1840, (23), pp.309–310. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18573/romtext.95
Spellbinding
Mere Orthodoxy
“Let’s get one thing straight: there is nothing wrong with shooting an albatross. The albatross was never taken commonly to be a symbol of Christian piety, nor were they “tutelary spirits” of a particular region, as Coleridge’s friend Wordsworth somewhere suggests, and as guides of a voyage they were perfectly useless. To kill one (or several) was not to declare one’s independence of nature, or of a God’s provision, and thus mount up on waxen wings, but was instead an effective way to get fresh meat at sea.”
Willett, Mischa. “Spellbinding”: Review of Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Malcom Guite. Mere Orthodoxy. Aug 27, 2017. Read online here
Selling Romantic Victorianism
Victorian Periodicals Review
“Literary Advertising and the Shaping of British Romanticism helpfully chronicles the rise of advertising in periodicals, highlighting its methods and subjects, from shoe-blacking to tooth powders. In addition, it relates advertising to Romantic literary ideals, which Mason claims “produced an endless series of imagined desires, none of which once attained offers more than fleeting pleasure” (16). This Romantic hedonistic mood, he argues, “trapped consumers in a cycle of constantly imagining that their next purchase would finally be the one that delivered the long-anticipated gratification” (16). He cites lamentations from readers, critics, and poets alike over the ubiquity of advertisements—with London plastered over in bills and all reviews a sham.”
Willett, Mischa. Review of Literary Advertising and the Shaping of British Romanticism, by Nicholas Mason. Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 47 no. 3, 2014, p. 526-528. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/vpr.2014.0028.
Jar of Flies
Books and Culture
“Mostly, these poems are brave and direct meditations on common life, but not in the aestheticized version of the confessionals wherein the poet cuts an onion so lovingly, so specifically, so poetically that we're supposed to go re-enjoy the world in all its quirky wonder thereafter. Rather, they're concerned with the real difficulties of trying to please one's father; of having friends lose touch due to drug abuse, with everything. But the poems aren't downers like that.”
Willett, Mischa. Review of Flies, by Michael Dickman. Books and Culture, July 2011. Read online here
Unto Thyself any Graven Images
Books and Culture
“William Blake was not only a painter and a poet, but considered himself a prophet of God, and thought every Christian should be one too. His work has attracted critical attention from its earliest days, and his body of poetic work is among the most-considered we have in English. Entering a critical arena so staffed with strength is then, itself, a bold—almost an aggressive—act, but Rowland is a bit timorous as a scholar. Often, rather than make a claim, he'll merely hint at a possible interpretation. His main method for this interpretation by implication is the questioning parenthetical, as in "There are also four cherubs at God's side (the four Zoas?), and above, two smaller angels," as though the statement, taken directly, would be too direct.”
Willett, Mischa. Review of Blake and the Bible by Christopher Rowland. Books and Culture, November 2011. Read online here