シェリーの “Mont Blanc” とヘレン・マライア・ウィリアムズ

Helen Maria Williams is best known for her witness account of the French Revolution with her eight volumes of Letters from France (1790-1796), which was widely read and used by many writers who referred to the events and the lives of people in France during the turbulent years of the Revolution, including Wordsworth, Hazlitt, and Carlyle. It is certain that Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was born a generation later read her books of prose and poetry. The center of attention in this study is two travel books to Switzerland: A tour in Switzerland published by Williams in 1798 and History of a Six Weeks' Tour written by Mary and Percy Shelley and published in 1817. Each contains accounts of the landscape and people of the region, and each contains a poem describing Alpine mountains. Shelley’s poem, “Mont Blanc,” is the better known of the two and has been a focus of critical attention by hundreds of books and articles. An examination of the writings of the two writers side by side will bring out the affinity in language and thought between the two writers and help understanding Shelley’s controversial poem as well. That affinity means how familiar Williams and other writers of 1790s were to Shelley. It also supports the view that British Romantic literature had its origin in the ideas of the progressive intellectuals of 1780s and 90s who welcomed the French Revolution. This paper attempts to support that hypothesis by illustrating the affinity in the poetic language and the ideas on the nature of imagination found in Williams’s A Tour and Shelley’s famous poem. The two writer’s poems share a characteristic attitude in the observation of nature. It is to look at nature with all its details but to leave what is incomprehensive as it is. The affinity thus brought out sheds light on the enigmatic ending of Shelley’s “Mont Blanc.”