SOURCE: “Baffled Narrative in Julian and Maddalo,” in New Romanticisms: Theory and Critical Practice, University of Toronto Press, 1994, pp. 52-68.

In the following essay, Wall focuses on the dynamics of narrative suppression in Shelley's poem Julian and Maddalo.

I

I rode one evening with Count Maddalo Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand … 

Is this … 

(ll. 1-4, 7)

Thus begins Shelley's Julian and Maddalo. The dichotomy between Julian's simultaneous freedom of movement—on horseback with his powerful Byronic friend the count—and his situation at a point of interruption—on ‘the bank of land which breaks the flow / Of Adria towards Venice’—prefigures the poem's shifting narrative sands.

The poem's subtitle, ‘A Conversation,’ appears to refer to that held between Maddalo and Julian as they ride on the Lido. The ride and the conversation...