ABSTRACT
Adonais (1821), Shelley's elegy for Keats, asks to be read in relation to the poet's use of genre, which in turn demands that the critic considers how the poem handles the emotion of grief and the process of coming to terms with grief. Peter Sacks illustrates these matters by reading the poem with psychoanalytical considerations in mind. Shelley's particularly skillful use of the Spenserian stanza will be reversed in the last section of the poem, where the stanzas yield their potential for exploratory romance, for the progressive crossing of thresholds. Returning to recognition of the self-divisive aspect of Shelley's work of mourning, it is clear that this self-presentation in terms of wounded, withered, and annihilated vegetation figures identifies the mortal part of Shelley's ego with the slain Adonais. The process of narcissistic idealization has been analyzed in general by Heinz Kohut, one of the first theorists to explore the beneficial potential of narcissism.
