La prolungata trasfigurazione di Percy Bysshe Shelley (lezioni post-processuali per archeologi processualisti)

The drowning in front of the shores of Leghorn of the young british poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) with two companions, and their funerals, have been the focus of a undeclared ideological conflict opposing the unorthodox life and views of the poet, his wife, family, and circle of close friends, to the conservative attitudes of the british academy and the local italian catholic community. Several sources of information (reports, narratives and memorial artworks) allow us to follow some steps of this long-lasting conflict of values. This process eventually resulted in a heroization of Shelley and the absorption of his work in the national dome of english poetry, so much for the poet’s progressist and even anarchist orientation. Eventually, the narrative provides a perfect example of the validity of post-processualist claims that funerals and graves, rather than being “frozen frames” of the role of a individual in her/his society, are crucial issues of social confrontation among sets of values and individual drives, a process extending well beyond the site and place of the final burial. It is admitted that in archaeological terms, the excavation of his grave would reveal very little of this complicated contingency and the manifold involved meanings. On the other hand, recomposing conflicts into the mainstream ideologies took two generations and the production of major artworks (a famous painting and memorial sculptures) that completely falsified the historical truth of the events.