Theorizing a republican poetics: P.B. Shelley and Alfieri

Abstract

In A Defence of Poetry, written in Tuscany in early 1821, Shelley considered the role of poetry in effecting freedom at a time when monarchies in Europe were in crisis. This essay speculates that his Italian situation speaks to Della tirannide, Del principe e delle lettere and Vita, amongst the most esteemed of Alfieri’s works. An outline is offered first of Shelley’s recorded engagement with Alfieri’s writings, including their distinct conceptions of tragedy, then of the treatment of Alfieri in reviews between 1800 and 1825. Consideration is also given to representations of Alfieri by Foscolo, Byron and Staël. The latter are not unsympathetic towards Alfieri’s view that the artist’s principal function is as a patriot since it is a fitting response to the impossible political situation of Italy. Like Alfieri’s prose, Shelley’s Defence and A Philosophical View of Reform align poetry against monarchy and set the writer apart from the state. His interests therefore correspond with the cosmopolitan, transnational reach of Alfieri’s writings, not only the uses made of them for nationalist ends by others. Finally, it is noticed that Shelley discovered in Italy what Alfieri found in England, a critical vantage‐point that enabled the expression of cosmopolitan republican values.