Fancy's Flight: "The Witch of Atlas"

Consciously fanciful and virtuosic, "The Witch of Atlas" has often drawn dissatisfied or dismissive responses. The present reading suggests that as well as enjoying the poem's urbane humor, we should take seriously its exploration of how poetic form orients and expands readers' thinking. Focusing on rhyme and allusions to Greek and Latin poetry, I argue that the poem shows Shelley fashioning a mode of response in which the poet's idioms act as the grounds for a shared subjectivity.