Their Own Eternity

Abstract

Chapter 3 pursues his speculations. Throughout his poetry Shelley returns obsessively to the different kinds of survival thought and sentiment might enjoy after death — an idea which lies behind many of the stranger incidents in his poetry. The chapter offers a selective overview of examples taken from the early ‘Poems about Mary’ (1810) to the late ‘Ginevra’ (1821). This chapter also examines the ways in which Shelley challenges any clear division between life and death, a recurring theme that is bound up with the charge of morbidity levelled against him by early critics.