Shelley’s Poetical Pisgah: The Visionary Capacity of Poetry, Dr Jon Quayle
26 November, 13:00-14:00
Conference Room, Newcastle Law School
Abstract
This paper will focus on the idea of the ‘Poetical Pisgah’ as a conceptual model for understanding how Shelley’s poetry sensitises the mind to the prospect of a utopian future. The idea of the ‘Poetical Pisgah’ is taken from a review of Prometheus Unbound by William Hazlitt in The London Magazine, in which he declares that, in the poem:
The soul of man […] is elevated to the highest point of the poetical Pisgah, from whence a land of promise, rich with blessings of every kind, is pointed out to its delighted contemplation.
In the reference to a ‘poetical Pisgah’—Pisgah being the mountain from which Moses was shown the Promised Land by God—Hazlitt suggests a metaphor that can serve as a model for understanding the ways in which Shelley conceptualises the future, which has broader implications for how we understand the capacity of poetry to open up the mind to visions of the future and utopian prospects.