ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book identifies and explores the fantasy construct that provides this textual feature of Shelley's writing with collective purpose. It deals primarily with issues involving the Romantic poet's effort to preserve Andrew Bennett's identity. Lawrence Kramer's study places Shelley's philosophical fascination with music's apparent transcendent qualities within an effort by nineteenth-century writers and composers to explore the longstanding perception that music and poetry are the most closely related of all the arts. Susan Wolfson explores what she believes constitutes Shelley's intuitive awareness of the poet's ultimate inability to shape the social reception of his own work, whether he 'projects' a public or private audience. In Arbitrary Power, William Keach focuses on the relationship between language and power that arose during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and continues to resonate in contemporary theory.
