INTRODUCTION

With the exemplification of Shelley's poetic figures of diet in mind, what are the networks which set up the grounding notions of ‘aesthetics’ and ‘economies’? This chapter explores Shelley's vegetarian prose and its sources, analysing the implications that vegetarianism brings to bear upon the text and upon theories of writing and representation. It puts in play the concept of ‘disfiguration’, shorthand for the notion that the act of representing involves a degree of violence to the body of the thing represented (through masking, elision, incompleteness and so on); and that this violence can be traced in the letter of the resultant text as a mark or taint. The vegetarian writers who influenced Shelley were anxious that language should not be disfiguring, that it should mark without tainting. This anxiety suggests political implications about the representation of the body in society.

Disfiguration is countered by nature's silent eloquence.