Shelley's despondency theme: the short lyrics from 1817 to 1822.

Abstract

This study is the result of my continued interest in Shelley and of the encouragement given this interest by Dr. Charles Walton, Department of English, Kansas State Teachers College. Since this particular aspect of Shelley's poetry has not been previously investigated, my use of secondary sources has been necessarily limited. Those which have been especially valuable are Newman Ivey White's Shelley, the standard biography of the poet, and James A. Notopoulos's The Platonism of Shelley, a definitive study of the Platonic elements in Shelley's poetry.