ABSTRACT
The spirit of Bacchus, which signifies both liberation and joy, is a consistent dimension of Shelley's mature poetry. The Bacchic is also associated with Shelley's version of an ideal, originary moment of history, whose geographical and cultural basis is the Orient. Bacchus's journey to India is followed loosely in the poetic locations of Alastor and Prometheus Unbound and in the myth of an undifferentiated society, where 'the Celt knew the Indian'. If the Bacchic is a way to disperse and fragment political order in society, it also disturbs more recent notions of 'Romantic Hellenism' and the idealist aesthetic which that collocation invokes. Even recent deconstructionist criticism has transformed Romantic myth-making into a reflexive trope. Romantic critics, including Lockhart and Schlegel, underpinned their understanding of the aesthetic powers of Greek drama and mythology with an emphasis on authority. Bacchic and maenadic fervour thus symbolizes both the teleology of revolution and its dangers.
