Shelley's autobiographical Epipsychidion, as the published Advertisement for the poem acknowledges, drew creatively upon Dante's celebration of eternal, constant, love, Vita Nouva, and the biblical Song of Solomon. This personal record of honest and dishonest love that unfolds during the course of Shelley's narrative also derives its ideal structure for these amorous revelations, in part, from another Dantean work that Shelley had translated, Convivio. Much of the poetic material which, eventually, formed the published version of Epipsychidion was produced at the same time that Shelley was, frenetically, composing lines for two other narrative poetic fragments centred on Italian subjects (entitled ‘Ginerve' and ‘Fiordispina'). Although a substantial portion of the verse moulded into Shelley's completed Epipsychidion was written between December 1820 and 16 February 1821, a number of additional verse lines that were melded into the...
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Citation: Sandy, Mark. "Epipsychidion". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 August 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5313, accessed 05 December 2025.]
