ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to articulate the importance of one such 'masterpiece of nature' in the creation of another, in an examination of how the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge influenced the poetic development of Percy Bysshe Shelley. It focuses on Coleridge as Shelley's significant precursor is not to suggest that the attention paid to the relationship between Wordsworth and Shelley by Blank, Bloom and others is in any way misplaced. A comparison of the mode of engagement which G. Kim Blank detects between Shelley and Wordsworth and that which this study argues exists between Shelley's work and that of Coleridge demonstrates the surprisingly different ways in which the younger poet reacted to the work of two of his most recent poetic precursors. In denying intent, positive or otherwise, on the part of the poet, Bloom also denies the critic the means to pursue the process of allusion and describe the nature of influence.
