（英语语言文学专业论文）试论雪莱的抒情诗之美.pdf

v 摘 要 珀西比希雪莱( 1 7 9 2 - - 1 8 2 2 ) 是英国文学史上最有才华的抒情诗人之 一，更被誉为诗人中的诗人。其一生见识广泛，不仅是柏拉图主义者，更是个伟 大的理想主义者。雪莱诗歌的一个显著特点就是其诗艺的优美，尤其表现在他的 抒情诗中。 雪莱的散文作品诗的辩护 （1 8 2 1 ）大量阐述了诗歌语言的特点及其审美观 点。一些美学理论也恰当地运用在本文的分析中。本文试图在前人研究成果的基 础上通过文本细读的方法，去探讨其美学观点以及在抒情诗歌中的美的特质。 本文的主体部分包括三章： 第一章音乐之美。在雪莱的抒情诗中，音乐性是表现诗歌美的必要因素。诗 歌的音乐美通过音律产生的节奏感，和谐的韵律，以及诗节形式的创新，因此， 他的抒情诗具有优美的旋律以及强烈的音乐效果。 第二章意象之美。意象是诗歌的灵魂。本章通过诗歌中色与光的意象，快速 与渐变的意象，以及融合在一起的感官意象（即通感意象） ，不仅能带来感官享 受，而且予以崇高的精神力量。 第三章语言的含蓄美。含蓄的语言可以激起读者的想象，从而发现作品字面意 义之外的意味和情趣。雪莱使用隐喻、象征及典故等修辞手法从而达到含蓄的效 果。 凭借着丰富的想象和对美的不懈追求， 雪莱实用高超的技巧选择音乐性，意 象以及修辞性的语言在他的抒情诗中创造了一个美的世界。 关键词：珀西比希雪莱 抒情诗 美 语言 iv abstract percy bysshe shelley is one of the most gifted lyrical poets in english literature, and even was hailed as the poet of poets. he is a man of wide knowledge and experience during his lifetime. he is a platonist as well as a great idealist. the most outstanding feature in his poetry is its sheer beauty, especially in his lyrical poetry. shelley s a defence of poetry (1821) is largely an account of language of poetry and shelley s aesthetic ideas. some aesthetic theories are applied in the analysis of this thesis. on the basis of former studies, this thesis, through close reading, attempts to explore the aesthetic idea and quality of beauty in shelley s lyrical poetry, the main body of this thesis includes three chapters: chapter one deals with the beauty of music. in shelley s lyrics, musicality in poetry is an essential element to show beauty. the musical beauty are created through metrical rhythm, harmonious rhyme and experiment in stanzaic form, which is mainly produced for melodious sound and bring strongly musical effects. chapter two focuses on the beauty of imagery, which functions as “ soul” of poetry. this chapter discusses the images of color and light, images of swiftness and evanescence, and integrated sensuous images (i.e. synaesthetic imagery), not only bring about the sensuous enjoyment, but also spiritual power of sublimity. chapter three explores the beauty of implicitness. implicit language can inspire the reader s profound imagination, so as to appreciate the deep thought beyond the literal meaning. shelley employs such certain rhetoric methods as metaphor, symbol and allusion to achieve the implicit effects. with the immense power of imagination, percy bysshe shelley, who pursued poetic beauty throughout his whole life, used the musicality, image and rhetoric language to create a poetic world of beauty in his poetry. key words: percy bysshe shelley lyrical poetry beauty language iii 学位论文原创性声明 本人所提交的学位论文 on the beauty in shelley s lyrical poetry，是在导师的 指导下， 独立进行研究工作所取得的原创性成果。 除文中已经注明引用的内容外， 本论文不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的研究成果。 对本文的研究 做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中标明。 本声明的法律后果由本人承担。 论文作者（签名） ： 指导教师确认（签名） ： 年 月 日 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解河北师范大学有权保留并向国家有关部门或机构 送交学位论文的复印件和磁盘，允许论文被查阅和借阅。本人授权河北师范大学 可以将学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、缩 印或其它复制手段保存、汇编学位论文。 （保密的学位论文在 年解密后适用本授权书） 论文作者（签名） ： 指导教师（签名） ： 年 月 日 年 月 日 1 introduction percy bysshe shelley (1792 1822) was one of the major english romantic poets and is critically regarded as one of the finest lyric poets in english language. shelley s close friend thomas medwin wrote: “ his writing is at once the most passionate and intense of all the romantic poets, and yet the most intellectual, the fullest of philosophical speculation and technical experiment.” 1 he made brilliant innovations and experiments in poetic language, and he wrote a magnificent essay on the meaning and importance of poetry: a defence of poetry (1821), which stands as a powerful statement of the romantic ideal of art and the artist. a. a summary of shelley study the history of shelleys critical reputation has been characterized by radical shifts. during his lifetime he was generally viewed as a misguided genius; critics frequently deplored his atheism and unorthodox philosophy. nevertheless, shelley was known and admired by his great contemporaries; byron, keats, wordsworth, coleridge, and southey regarded his works with varying degrees of sympathy and approval. shelley was regarded as the prototype of the misunderstood poetic genius during the victorian era. the misconception of shelley is most boldly stated by matthew arnold, who called him an “ ineffectual angel beating his beautiful wings in the void.” 2 the struggle to establish shelley s poetic reputation after his death was led initially by his wife mary shelley and his close friends leigh hunt and thomas medwin. beginning in the late 1820s and carrying through the 1840s, this cause was taken up by such younger writers as alfred tennyson and robert browning. serious interest in his works began to revive in the late 1940s as scholars came to recognize the complexity of his style, philosophy, and major themes. in examining his style commentators have generally focused on his imagery, platonic ideology and technical achievements. richard harter fogle published the imagery of keats and shelley in 1949. neville rogers argued that shelley adopts symbols similar to those used by 2 plato veils, boats, cave in order to represent the mind s ascent into the realm of eternal. 3 other critics also revealed shelley s aesthetic ideas by linking his depiction of platonism with what they consider poetical or beautiful. c.e. pulos commented on shelley s platonism that “ it is generally agreed that the main feature of shelley s platonism is his pursuit of beauty.” 4 the years 1959 saw the publication of some major books that heralded a new attitude toward shelley. criticism of shelleys works has generally been marked by increasing respect for his abilities as a poet and his language style and aesthetic ideology. most important was earl r. wasserman s the subtler language. through detailed analysis of poetic structure, diction, and tropes, wasserman showed how the private symbolic imagination of a romantic poet necessarily differed from the more public discourse of the earlier poets, who enjoyed a common cultural inheritance. the chief shelleyans appeared in america during 1940s- 50s. for example, newman ivey white wrote masterly two- volume biography shelley in 1940. penn edited the letters of percy bysshe shelley (1964); and carlos baker s shelley s major poetry (1948), a series of critical readings of individual poems that surpasses those in earlier books. in china, the translation of shelley s poems came into being in the early 20th century. the famous writers, such as lun xun and su manshu, have translated shelley s poetry; they respectively paid attention to shelley s moral resistance and his sense of beauty. in the late 1920s, attention has also been devoted to the translation of shelley s lyrics such as love poem and elegy, chinese poets thought highly of shelley s exquisite poetics and aesthetic ideas. in 1943, wei huazhuo translated an english version of a biography about shelley. 5 in the recent decades, jiang feng devoted to a great translation work in 2000, the completed works of percy bysshe shelley. and then the comprehensive shelley s studies came into being in china. the importance of platonism, the bible, as well as the french revolution to shelleys thought and writing has been explored by other researchers. many papers on shelley appeared, for example, shou judan published the paper on the shelley s aesthetic ideology, and gong xiaohui published the paper on the imagery in shelley s poetry, 3 etc. in addition, some chinese critics have compared shelley with some poets home and abroad, such as xu zhimo, wordsworth, byron, keats, and tagore, etc. b. shelley s literary work shelley s poetry, which during his life was received absolute indifference by the public and contempt by the reviewers. the general attitude towards shelley was more due to the outspoken attack on christianity in his first poem queen mab (1813), which followed his expulsion from oxford in 1810. his next poem alastor, or the spirit of solitude (1816), “ is a vaguely autobiographical account of a young poet s unsuccessful attempt to recapture his envisioned ideal.” 6 the music of the verse, indeed, and the poetic imagery are the chief and sole interest of the poem. shelley turned back to his mission of converting this stubborn world to his own ideals of liberty and love in the revolt of islam (1818), firstly entitled laon and cythna, deals with the positive power of love, the complexities of good and evil, and ultimately, a spiritual victory through martyrdom. but all the early poems are the works of a sick man. with the transition to italy in 1818 came a complete recovery in shelley s health and a strengthening and clarification of his style. this is the chief effect on the thought and substance of his poems. epipsychidion (1821) chronicles shelleys search for ideal beauty through his relationships with women. when he attempted drama on the greek model, the form s austerity compelled him to more definiteness in prometheus unbound and hellas, his celebration of the spirit of freedom is noble reading. his one true drama, the cenci, is based on a story so horrible as hardly to be endured; stephen gwynn wrote, “ since the days of shakespeare no tragedy at all approaching it (the cenci) had been written.” 7 drawing on the formal tradition of elegiac verse, adonais: an elegy on the death of john keats (1821) laments keatss early death and, while rejecting the christian view of resurrection, describes his return to the eternal beauty of the universe. even so, not all of his works are truly great. his first long poem, queen mab, with its famous attack on christianity, is very light and vague and unsatisfactory. 4 shelley s long poems are full of gaps lines with words left out, beginnings that have no ending, and endings that have no beginning. when come to drama, prometheus unbound is based upon greek studies. f. r. leavis revaluated this drama: “ in prometheus unbound, the high- pitched emotions, the tone and movement, the ardors, ecstasies and despairs, are too much the same all through. the effect is of vanity and emptiness as well as monotony.” 8 another is the marvelous and horrible drama of the cenci. here shelley is very great; but it is not actable. from the above comment shelley was not gifted for drama or narrative. his greatness is to be sought for in his lyrical poems. it is at any rate universally agreed that shelley s genius was “ essentially lyrical” , which would imply a special emotional intensity. thus there is certainly a sense in which shelley s poetry is peculiarly emotional. c. beauty in shelley s lyrical poetry it is almost entirely by his lyrical poetry that shelley holds his place. the aerial qualities of the imagination, the swift and varied music of rhythms that answer to every change of passion, and the pure air of song, thus henry salt said, “ shelley has no equal among the lyric poets of his country.” 9 one can call up a few of the numbers: “ swiftly walk over the western wave, spirit of night,” “ music when soft voices die,” “ on a poet s lips i slept” ; hymn to intellectual beauty and mont blanc focus on shelleys belief in an animating spirit, and above all, the ode to the west wind: this is shelley s song to that breath of nature that is destroyer and preserver, the wind of autumn, the wind of spring, lord of the powers of the sky, lord of the sea. it is in short an ode to the wind that is the very spirit of the universe, with which shelley sought more and more to identify himself in imagination. in a word, he bequeathed to literature the finest lyrical work, in some respects, of the nineteenth century. this thesis contains all the great lyrics of shelley, such as to a skylark, ode to the west wind, the cloud, and stanzas written near naples. it contains also such noble 5 specimens of his art as adonais, the sensitive plant, and the lines written among the euganean hills. in his lyrical poems, one finds the essence of shelley s qualities- - - ethereal yet passionate imagination, refined intellectuality, deep feeling, and an exquisite music of words. shelley moved in a world of pure poetry, uncontaminated by realities, insulated from the harsh necessities of meaning. shelley recorded the praise of life, the pursuit of beauty and the yearning for freedom in his breath- taking lyrical poetry. shelley has ever written in the defence, “ poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world.” “ what were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship- - - what were the scenery of this beautiful universe which we inhabit- - - what were our consolations on this side of the grave- - - and what were our aspirations beyond it if poetry did not ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl- winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar?” 10 as far as shelley is concerned, poetry is like light and fire flying through the air against the wind. it should present the beauty in poet s heart to the world, should create the beauty of the world. as an excellent lyrical singer, shelley composed much fresh and beautiful lyrical poetry. he sang out the nature, love and ideal with brilliant and passionate feelings, to express his ardently pursuing the happiness and beauty, give people a kind of positive enjoyment of encouraging power and artistic beauty. the lyric, it has been generally thought, is of all poetic genres the most spontaneous and artless. sense of beauty is essential. this thesis, therefore, is to examine a number of well- known lyrics to see if some reveal the poetic beauty as well as emotion, and if rhythm, rhyme in prosody, images or rhetorical devices, seem to be used for the sake of creating beauty and of expressing its meaning. shelley s lyrics are admirably suited to this purpose since they are numerous, varied, and familiar, and since they are generally regarded as approaching the beau ideal of the lyric: spontaneous, formless, and exquisite. through an exposition of shelley s idea of language, as reflected in his poetics 6 writing a defence of poetry, and focused attention to his actual practice in individual poems, wordsworth valuated shelley as “ one of the best artists of us all: i mean in workmanship of style” . 11 the study of shelley s aesthetic practice in his lyrical poetry is the result of my desire to see how shelley s imagination, thought and emotion contribute to the beauty of sounds, images and the language of implicitness in his lyrical poetry. i have tried to probe into the shelley s aesthetic ideas by reading his lyrical works. the structure of this paper is relatively simple, but certain of its features need emphasis. examination of the poetic and aesthetic ideas in a defence of poetry is necessary because it has direct relation to his aesthetic practice in his works. on the basis of the previous critical studies on shelley, this thesis tries to dig out beauty in shelley s lyrical poetry in a relatively systematic way. it is well known that shelley s poetry has a kind of musical quality. in addition, his poetry is very beautiful and distinctive in images. he also uses certain rhetoric devices to show the implicit beauty of poetry. so this essay will explore these beautiful elements from the aspects of sound pattern, image and rhetoric methods. in it, some poetic and aesthetic theory will be applied. sound, image and rhetoric language all contribute to the beauty of shelley s lyrical poetry. moreover, they are held together by the pervasive “ lyrical emotion” , and that this should be capable of holding them together is comment enough on the nature of its aesthetic strength. 7 chapter i beauty in music shelley has a sharp ear to rhythms and sounds of english language. he is very skillful at controlling the musical sounds of language. “ with him a poem is a melody rather than a manuscript.” 12 shelley found in musicality of poetry an ideal model which to describe poetry s relation to thought, emotion, and imagination. northrop frye s discussion of the lyric s relation to music remains standard. frye traces music- like rhythm of the lyric back to its origins in song. frye defines, “ the lyrics as primarily addressed to the ear that is characterized by the assumed concealment of the reader from the poet and by the predominance of an associational rhythm distinguished both from recurrent meter and from semantic or prose rhythm.” 13 shelley lays much emphasis on the musicality of poetry. he has ever vividly described poetry as “ the echo of eternal music” , and so musicality becomes the key to appreciate the poetry. in a defense of poetry, shelley presented definition of poetry by analogy with music, “ poetry, in general sense, may be defined to be the expression of the imagination : and poetry is connate with the origin of man. man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impressions are driven, like the alternations of an ever- changing wind over an aeolian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever- changing melody.” 14 shelley is able to promote poetry as the highest form of music because of its dual nature as language and sound, both of which relate to thought. thus, interested in the expressive potentialities of a poetry that is charged with music, shelley aspires to overcome the limitations of language and to bring poetry closer to the music. imaging a realm “ where music and moonlight and feeling / are one.” (to jane) 8 this chapter will discuss from three aspects of the metrical rhythm, harmonious rhyme and stanzaic pattern to explore the importance of musicality in shelley s poetry, as