Ironic Modes of Satanism in Byron and Shelley

Abstract

A protean conception, ‘Romantic Irony’ has been invoked in various forms to interpret the writing of the age excluded by the central paradigms of theory and criticism. One kind is based in ontological and epistemological skepticism: Romantic irony as defined by Anne Mellor refers to the artist’s recognition and embrace of the fictiveness of ideas of order. The art of the Romantic ironist embodies an ‘enthusiastic response to process and change,’ and thus this form of ironic vision is celebratory in function. It does not encompass writing wherein ‘the perception of a chaotic universe arouses either guilt or fear.’¹ Where the celebratory mode of Romantic irony leaves off, another begins, described by Stuart Sperry as a variable, but often perplexed and angst-ridden response to ‘indeterminacy.’ Sperry finds a representative moment of Keatsian irony in the visionary speaker’s awakening within the domed sanctuary of The Fall of Hyperion, where its mysterious interior impresses on him ‘a blinding sense of unfathomability.’ Sperry locates Shelleyan irony in his radically contrasting perspectives on the human condition, emphasizing Shelley’s habitual swerving between representations of high idealism (Prometheus Unbound) and reality (The Cenci). Works like The Witch of Atlas seem composed as a deliberate effort to escape the latter in a realm of supernatural play.²