Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1993

Source Publication

Nineteenth-Century Literature

Abstract

When the hero of Ferdinand von Loeben's 1 808 novel Guido sees a sample of handwriting in Sanskrit he remarks, "languages have always seemed to me to be lost holy children who cover the whole world in search of their mother" (p. 62). Guido's observation could stand as a paraphrase of Percy Shelley's lifelong interest in language, mediated as it was by his equally compelling obsessions with maternity and subjectivity. And we are fortunate to have these three concerns brought together by Barbara Gelpi's Shelley's Goddess.

Comments

Published version. Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 48, No. 3 (December 1993): 365-368. DOI: 10.2307/2933654. © University of California Press 1993. Used with permission.