Howard Brenton, Bloody Poetry

Steve Barfield (University of Human Development, Suleymanyia, Iraqi Kurdistan); Julie Waddington

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1981

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Play

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Bloody Poetry

, inspired by Richard Holmes’ biography of Shelley, contains some of Howard Brenton’s most lyrical theatre poetry. It tells the story of Shelley (known by his middle-name Bysshe), Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and Claire Clairemont in exile in Italy, upper-class revolutionaries on the run, living out their utopian ideas of free love and communal creativity away from the trappings of conventional society. The play makes explicit the contradictions at the heart of their romantic project: Shelley writes revolutionary poems, but most of Europe cannot read, and he theorises transcendence, while the practice of his life, as Byron puts it, “Doth make us all naked and bleeding and real”. Brenton said that he wrote the play because political developments in contemporary Britain had…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1183 words

Citation: Barfield, Steve, Julie Waddington. "Bloody Poetry". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 31 January 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13577, accessed 19 April 2024.]

Save this article