At Casa Magni in Lerici, in early summer 1822, Shelley started composition of his final major poem, The Triumph of Life, fashioned after Dante's Divine Comedy and Petrarch's Trionfi. Written in terza rima Shelley's last work was never completed, as he was accidental drowned, along with Edward Williams, in a squall on 8 July, during their return voyage from Leghorn. Stressing the significance of this poetical fragment, Mary Shelley included the first published version of The Triumph of Life in her edition of Shelley's Posthumous Poems (1824).
Shelley's unfinished fragment is characterised by ontological and epistemological speculation about the nature of being and reality. Within the fragment's Dantean dream framework, these philosophical anxieties are evident in Shelley's ambivalent treatment of his central figure Rousseau, who is both rehabilitated and rejected as an author of...
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Citation: Sandy, Mark. "The Triumph of Life". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 September 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7981, accessed 05 December 2025.]
