Shelley's Dialogic Poetry: Julian and Maddalo

Abstract

Taking as its basic theoretical framework the emphasis given by German hermeneutics to the dialogic model of understanding – the “dialogue which we are”– and also Plato's use of the dialogue form as the fundamental device (textual, rhetorical, psychological, metaphysical) that informs his work, this paper looks into Shelley's employment of “dialogue,” both as a dialectical relation between mental functions, and particularly those of “reason” () and “imagination” (), and as a dramatic device in the writing of his poetry as well. The poem singled out for close reading in this context, as the one most closely “copying” the Platonic dialogues (structurally and thematically) is Julian and Maddalo, subtitled A Conversation. Julian is cast in the role of a Socrates to the Italian Maddalo's Sophist, while the third personage, the Maniac, is read as an embodiment of μανìα, erotic madness. Shelley's dialogic poem, unlike Plato's poetic dialogues, portrays the failure to integrate the erotic with the noetic, which leads to the final catastrophe. Yet, even a poem representing a communicative breakdown, can, by virtue of “poetry” lay claims to being a piece of “significant conversation.”