“...to poison and corrupt her soul”: Shelley’s Poetic Designs of Incest in The Cenci

  • Amadeus Kang-Po Chen University of Edinburgh

Abstract


This paper examines Percy Bysshe Shelley’s designs of the father-daughter incest in his tragedy The Cenci. It proposes that Shelley’s deviation from his historical source, concerning Count Cenci’s atrocities and Beatrice’s characterizations, insinuates the idea of incest as the embodiment of a dark poetics that features identity annihilation and assimilation. 

Published
28-May-2017
Section
Articles