ABSTRACT
A psychoanalytic approach to the rhetorical and social ambiguities that typify the poems Shelley devoted to musical women creates the possibility that, within the scope of fantasy, Shelley sought to communicate with Sophia, Claire and Jane on a level approaching the Lacanian 'real'. Lacan defines the 'real' as an unknown value that exists outside the symbolic and resists construction. Cardio-respiratory rhythms and emotionally charged syllables possess dubious communicative value outside the realm of the words and measures that codify them. And, though they might command a value beyond the linguistic that value according to Lacan remains an x-factor, an unapproachable commodity that lies outside of speech. The 'natural attractions' Shelley has in mind theoretically qualify as erotic behaviors that stand outside the realm of symbolic construction and gesture, therefore, in the direction of the 'real'. Shelley's desire for what musical women represented finds its most intense expression in the poems he wrote for Jane Williams.
