The Case of Shelley

Abstract

Shelley’s reputation in this century has often been represented by his vindicators as if it were a kind of sandcastle, knocked down with a kick or two in the 1930s by those philistine bullies, T. S. Eliot and F. R. Leavis, and since then painstakingly rebuilt by a faithful band of sensitive but disinterested scholars. Frederick Pottle’s 1952 essay, “The Case of Shelley”, is still the classic statement of this slightly aggrieved and beleaguered position. Writing in the very shadow of the New Critical volcano, Pottle pointed out a number of fundamental misreadings of the poet in crucial essays by Eliot, Leavis and Allen Tate, and called for less “prescription” and more “calm, patient, neutral description” in modern criticism in general.¹