Politics as absence in Tintern Abbey and Mont Blanc

Sa？etak This paper will take as its starting point the analysis of two complementary poems, by two Romantic writers, Wordsworth and Shelley. The comparative analysis of their two greatest ‘nature’ poems, namely ‘Tintern Abbey’ and ‘Mont Blanc’ is in many ways justified by the fact that Wordsworth was seen by Shelley as his literary father and ‘Mont Blanc’ is Shelley’s response to ‘Tintern Abbey’. In order to highlight the idea that in both poems ‘nature’ acts as an empty signifier and thus questions rather than asserts their radical potential, I want to focus on the controlling power of politics which is absent from these poems. This type of reading then becomes an extension of the new historicist view that most Romantic poems occlude their involvement in historical relations and shows that they cannot be read without taking into account the forces of politics