Introduction: A Philosophical Poet (of Ordinary Language); Chapter 1: The Everlasting Universe of Things as Shelley Found It in 1816: ?Mont Blanc? and ?Hymn to Intellectual Beauty?; Chapter 2: Where Shelley Wrote and What He Wrote for: The Signature of ?Ode to the West Wind?; Chapter 3: Knowing What We Do (with Words): Act I of Prometheus Unbound; Chapter 4: Recounting Reverses, Recovering the Initiative: Act II of Prometheus Unbound; Chapter 5: The Congregated Powers of Language: Act IV of Prometheus Unbound; Chapter 6: Resounding Celebrations and Constraining Commissions: Act IV of Prometheus Unbound

'The Constitution of Shelley's Poetry' is a close philosophical reading of 'Prometheus Unbound' and other Shelley works from the perspective of the argument or drama of language played out in its pages. The book urges and practises close reading, but in the thought of Stanley Cavell, it finds and develops philosophical grounds for this ostensibly old-fashioned approach, and it implicitly proposes an understanding of language very different from those currently assumed in literary studies.