Weak Verse

Abstract

Chapter 6 explores Epipsychidion’s experiments with rhyming. From Alastor to Epipsychidion one can discern the same concerns for form and for the limit-points of manifest phenomena. But it is with Epipsychidion that Shelley tests and reflects on how he is writing. The chapter argues that the poem is strongly influenced by Pope’s ‘Eloisa to Abelard’ (1717). The poem’s searching self-consciousness results in a poetics of equivocation, which emerges from Shelley’s familiarity with Samuel Daniel’s pamphlet ‘A Defence of Rime’ (1603). While charting and enacting the arguments of these poets, Shelley diversifies his experiments with the invisible and unseen. He explores the idea of a poem’s susceptibility to power over or subjection to its own expressive repertoire and ideas.