ABSTRACT
According to Mark Sandy it is through an 'exertion of poetic creativity' that Shelley construes 'imaginative desperation as innovative opportunity for ingenious poetical triumph'. The culmination of Epipsychidion is probably the best example of poetic failure manifested as victory as the reader witnesses Shelley's energy fail on the cusp of imaginative consummation. It would be entirely erroneous to believe that Shelley for example 'turned Paradise Lost upside down' and challenged Milton's argument through advocating Satan as a model of ethical behaviour. Language, or the suggestion of a stable referent for language, is malleable in Shelley's verse in a way that counters the overriding principles of Paradise Lost. In one sense we could even argue that the rejection of the Phantasm's curse by Prometheus is actually the rejection of Paradise Lost – not of Milton as poet, but of Paradise Lost.
