The Merging of Physical and Mental Boundaries in Shelley’s Poetry and Prose

International audienceAfter a brief lexical survey of the words “boundary,” “bound(s),” “limits” and the like in Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)’s poetry, this paper focuses on what approximates geopolitical borders in his oeuvre, including the letters and travel narratives he and his wife Mary wrote during their successive trips to the Continent. Examples include the relationship between the Irish and English in Shelley’s earlier poetry, his treatment of the Greek war of independence in Hellas (1821), the flight of Liberty westwards in the travesty Swellfoot the Tyrant (1820) and the recuperation of the ancient Greek culture in “Arethusa” (1820), as well as the Shelley’s sailing down the Rhine border and crossing the frontier between France and Switzerland in 1814. This paper aims to confront Shelley’s poetical transcendence of frontiers and limits with the reality of actual border crossing to see how poetical views and experience interact with one another