Percy Bysshe Shelley, within “the Veins” of “Fair Milan”. A Map of the Poet’s Contacts and Places in April 1818

Abstract

This article adopts a historical and biographical perspective in order to investigate Percy Bysshe Shelley’s experience of Milan in April 1818. To this end, I trace the Shelleys’ arrival in the city and focus on the places they visited, their contacts, and the encounters they made so as to reconstruct the poet’s “Milanese circle”. Subsequently, I focus on “Ode to Naples” and Hellas and argue that Shelley’s references to the medieval and early modern history of the city should be seen as transhistorical allusions to the political contingency of the Lombardo-Venetian capital after the Hapsburg restoration.