셸리의 여행 삼부작 『얼래스터』, 『몽블랑』, 그리고 『마렝기』—자연으로의 복귀

Abstract

This research combines Shelly’s three poems Alastor, Mont Blanc and Marenghi into a so called Travel Trilogy. The unprecedented combination allow us to see Shelley’s eco-consciousness in a different light. Usually he has been considered as a radical revolutionist, as indicated by one of his representative nickname “meliorist.” Inevitably, the myth around him attributes his eco-consciousness to “Social Ecology,” which finds all reasons for the ecological crises in the human society and seeks the management of them in the system of society. Conventionally, most quest myths have as their frame the deep-rooted stereotype of “separation-initiation-return.” In combining three poems, this frame provides a meaningful coherence for the combination. The first work, Alastor, which deals with the separation from the anthropocentrism through the travel of a young poet, can be considered to be the first stage of the quest, “separation.” In Mont Blanc, Shelley expresses ecocentrism, provoked by the overwhelming sublimity of the mountain. In many ways, the travel to the mountain is the quest for the inversion of human’s superiority over nature. The last travel in Marenghi leads to the complete return to nature and also completes the cycle of the quest myth. Consequently, Shelley’s quest in the travel poems results in man’s symbiosis in nature. In these three poems, the trajectory of the travel shows a gradual shift from anthropocentric to ecocentric consciousness. And the Rousseauian return to nature reveals that Shelley is a Romantic forerunner of “Deep Ecology.”