Kelvin Everest’s Kowtow

Prof. Kelvin Everes
Emeritus A.C.Bradley
Professor of Modern Literature
University of Liverpool

Abstract:
This brief paper will introduce some newly emergent features of Shelley’s developing lyric style in the poems he was writing during the last five months of his life, February to July 1822. These features include a continuing impulse to experiment with variation within metrical pattern, and the elaboration of a range of loosely connected images and motifs, all apparently connected with his strengthening feelings for Jane Williams. Examples will be drawn from short lyrics drafted by Shelley in his notebooks (see the handout).

Bio:
Kelvin Everest is Emeritus A. C. Bradley Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Liverpool. He is a Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College Cambridge, and also spent a period as a Research Fellow at St John’s College Oxford. Over the past thirty years his research has concentrated mainly on Shelley, including several essays and chapters and two edited collections. Professor Everest has served on the Research Panel of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and is Associate Editor of the New Dictionary of National Biography (with responsibility for all literary subjects born 1770-1825). As Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, 2001-2016, Professor Everest worked extensively in China to develop Xian Jiaotong Liverpool University, in Suzhou, and he has a long-standing interest in the history and culture of China.