Shadows and Dreams: Conclusions

This brief concluding chapter explores the inherent contradiction, and therefore insurmountable difficulty, in trying to find ‘narrative totality’ (Hugh Roberts) in Shelley’s last unfinished fragment, ‘The Triumph of Life’ (1822). It argues that ‘The Triumph of Life’, as a recovered and reconstituted draft, cannot be considered on the same terms as the other poems examined in the present study. It also argues that in attempting to sum up the meaning and value of Shelley’s poetical responses to death, his concept, from ‘The Sensitive-Plant’, of ‘the shadows of the dream’ offers a useful organising principle.