Zastrozzi
Encyclopedia
Zastrozzi: A Romance is a Gothic novel by Percy Bysshe Shelley
first published in 1810
in London by George Wilkie and John Robinson anonymously, with only the initials of the author's name, as "by P.B.S.". The first of Shelley's two early, Gothic novels, it outlines his atheistic
worldview through the villain
Zastrozzi and touches upon his earliest thoughts on irresponsible self-indulgence and violent revenge. An 1810 reviewer wrote that the main character "Zastrozzi is one of the most savage and improbable demons that ever issued from a diseased brain."
Shelley wrote Zastrozzi at the age of seventeen while attending his last year at Eton College
, though it was not published until later in 1810 while he was attending University College, Oxford
. The novel was Shelley's first published prose work.
on the title page of the novel is from Paradise Lost
(1667) by John Milton
, Book II, pp. 368–371:
—That their God
May prove their foe, and with repenting hand
Abolish his own works—This would surpass
Common revenge.
– Paradise Lost.
where he lives and take him to a cavern hideout. Verezzi is locked in a room with an iron door. Chains are placed around his waist and limbs and he is attached to the wall.
Verezzi is able to escape and to flee his abductors, running away to Passau
in Lower Bavaria
. Claudine, an elderly woman, allows Verezzi to stay at her cottage. Verezzi saves Matilda from jumping off of a bridge. She befriends him. Matilda seeks to persuade Verezzi to marry her. Verezzi, however, is in love with Julia. Matilda provides lodging for Verezzi at her castle or mansion estate near Venice
. Her tireless efforts to seduce him are unsuccessful.
Zastrozzi concocts a plan to torture and to torment Verezzi. He spreads a false rumor that Julia has died, exclaiming to Matilda: "Would Julia of Strobazzo's heart was reeking on my dagger!" Verezzi is convinced that Julia is dead. Distraught and emotionally shattered, he then relents and offers to marry Matilda.
The truth is revealed that Julia is still alive. Verezzi is so distressed at his betrayal that he kills himself. Matilda kills Julia in retaliation. Zastrozzi and Matilda are arrested for murder. Matilda repents. Zastrozzi, however, remains defiant before an inquisition. He is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.
Zastrozzi confesses that he sought revenge against Verezzi because Verezzi's father had deserted his mother, Olivia, who died young, destitute, and in poverty. Zastrozzi blamed his father for the death of his mother, who died before she was thirty. Zastrozzi sought revenge against not only his own father, whom he murdered, but also against "his progeny for ever", his son Verezzi. Verezzi and Zastrozzi had the same father. By murdering his own father, Zastrozzi only killed his corporeal body. By manipulating Verezzi into committing suicide, however, Zastrozzi confessed that his objective was to achieve the eternal damnation of Verezzi's soul based on the proscription of the Christian religion against suicide. Zastrozzi, an outspoken atheist, goes to his death on the rack rejecting and renouncing religion and morality "with a wild convulsive laugh of exulting revenge".
, regarded as the first literary magazine, published a favorable review of Zastrozzi in 1810: "A short, but well-told tale of horror, and, if we do not mistake, not from an ordinary pen. The story is so artfully conducted that the reader cannot easily anticipate the denouement." The Critical Review
, a conservative journal with a "reactionary aesthetic agenda", on the other hand, called the main character Zastrozzi "one of the most savage and improbable demons that ever issued from a diseased brain." The reviewer dismissed the novel: "We know not when we have felt so much indignation as in the perusal of this execrable production. The author of it cannot be too severely reprobated. Not all his 'scintillated eyes,' his 'battling emotions,' his 'frigorific torpidity of despair'... ought to save him from infamy, and his volume from the flames."
Zastrozzi was republished in 1839 in The Romancist and Novelist's Library, No. 10, published in London by J. Clements.
Eustace Chesser
, in Shelley and Zastrozzi (1965), analyzed the novel as a complex psychological thriller: "When I first came across Zastrozzi I was immediately struck by its resemblance to the dream material with which every psychoanalyst is familiar. It was not a story told with the detachment of a professional writer for the entertainment of the public. Whatever the conscious intention of the young Shelley, he was in fact, writing for himself. He was opening the floodgates of the unconscious and allowing its fantasies to pour out unrestrainedly. He was betraying, unwittingly, the emotional problems that agitated his adolescent mind." Patrick Bridgwater, in Kafka, Gothic and Fairytale (2003), argued that the novel anticipated Franz Kafka
's work in the twentieth century.
Stylistically, the novel reveals several flaws. The most striking flaw is missing chapters, although some critics and editors have argued that Shelley intended this omission as a prank. At about one hundred pages, the novel is shorter than most Gothic novels, which prevents a more thorough and complete development of the characters. In the middle sections of the novel, moreover, there is not enough variation in the setting. There is a primary focus on Verezzi and Matilda at the exclusion of the other characters and at the expense of the plot development. Shelley also experiments with word selection and structure which tends to slow down the flow of the story.
wrote a successful play adaptation called Zastrozzi: Master of Discipline based on the Shelley novel. The play was based on a plot summary of the Shelley novel, but in and of itself was something "rather different from the novel," in the author's words. The play has been revived on several occasions and is part of the 2009 season of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Walker's play retains all the major characters of the Shelley novel, the core plot, and the moral and ethical issues relating to revenge and retribution and atheism.
In 1986, Channel Four Films in Britain produced a four-part television mini-series of the Shelley novel Zastrozzi, adapted and directed by David G. Hopkins and produced by Lindsey C. Vickers and David Lascelles, which was also shown on American television. Mark McGann
played Verezzi, Academy Award-winning actress Tilda Swinton
played Julia, Max Wall
was the Priest, while Zastrozzi was played by newcomer Geff Francis
. The production consisted of four 52-minute episodes. In 1990, Jeremy Isaacs
named the four-hour dramatisation of the early Shelley novel, Zastrozzi (1986), as one of the 10 programmes of which he was most proud during his tenure as Channel 4's chief executive.
; or, The Rosicrucian, A Romance, about an alchemist
who sought to impart the secret of immortality, published by John Joseph Stockdale
, at 41 Pall Mall
, in London, which relied more on the supernatural than did Zastrozzi, which was imbued with Romantic realism.
The principal fictional prose writings of Shelley are Zastrozzi, St. Irvyne, the chapbook Wolfstein (1815–18), The Coliseum (1817), Una Favola (A Fable), written in Italian, A True Story (attributed to him) from the 1820 Indicator by Leigh Hunt, which is almost identical to the poem The Sunset (1816), The Elysian Fields: A Lucianic Fragment, which presents fictional fantasy with political commentary, and The Assassins, A Fragment of a Romance (1814), an unfinished novella about a morality-driven sect of zealots determined to kill the tyrants and oppressive dictators in the world. Shelley also wrote the preface and contributed at least 4,000–5,000 words to the Gothic novel Frankenstein
(1818) by his wife Mary Shelley
.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
first published in 1810
1810 in literature
The year 1810 in literature involved some significant new books.-New books:*Catherine Cuthbertson - The Forest of Montalbano*Peter Middleton Darling - The Romance of the Highlands...
in London by George Wilkie and John Robinson anonymously, with only the initials of the author's name, as "by P.B.S.". The first of Shelley's two early, Gothic novels, it outlines his atheistic
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
worldview through the villain
Villain
A villain is an "evil" character in a story, whether a historical narrative or, especially, a work of fiction. The villain usually is the antagonist, the character who tends to have a negative effect on other characters...
Zastrozzi and touches upon his earliest thoughts on irresponsible self-indulgence and violent revenge. An 1810 reviewer wrote that the main character "Zastrozzi is one of the most savage and improbable demons that ever issued from a diseased brain."
Shelley wrote Zastrozzi at the age of seventeen while attending his last year at Eton College
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
, though it was not published until later in 1810 while he was attending University College, Oxford
University College, Oxford
.University College , is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2009 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £110m...
. The novel was Shelley's first published prose work.
Major characters
- Pietro Zastrozzi, an outlaw who seeks revenge against Verezzi, his half-brother
- Verezzi, Il Conte, imprisoned by Zastrozzi
- Julia, La Marchesa de Strobazzo, intended wife of Verezzi
- Matilda, the Contessa di Laurentini, seduces Verezzi in plan devised by Zastrozzi
- Bernardo, servant to Zastrozzi
- Ugo. servant to Zastrozzi
- Ferdinand Zeilnitz, servant to Matilda
- Bianca, servant to Zastrozzi
- Claudine, old woman in Passau, shelters Verezzi
- The Monk
- The Inquisitor
- The Superior, a judge
Epigraph
The epigraphEpigraph
Epigraph may refer to:* an inscription, as studied in the archeological sub-discipline of epigraphy* Epigraph , a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component...
on the title page of the novel is from Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
(1667) by John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
, Book II, pp. 368–371:
—That their God
May prove their foe, and with repenting hand
Abolish his own works—This would surpass
Common revenge.
– Paradise Lost.
Plot
Pietro Zastrozzi, an outlaw, and his two servants, Bernardo and Ugo, disguised in masks, abduct Verezzi from the inn near MunichMunich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
where he lives and take him to a cavern hideout. Verezzi is locked in a room with an iron door. Chains are placed around his waist and limbs and he is attached to the wall.
Verezzi is able to escape and to flee his abductors, running away to Passau
Passau
Passau is a town in Lower Bavaria, Germany. It is also known as the Dreiflüssestadt or "City of Three Rivers," because the Danube is joined at Passau by the Inn from the south and the Ilz from the north....
in Lower Bavaria
Lower Bavaria
Lower Bavaria is one of the seven administrative regions of Bavaria, Germany, located in the east of the state.- Geography :Lower Bavaria is subdivided into two regions - Landshut and Donau-Wald. Recent election results mark it as the most conservative part of Germany, generally giving huge...
. Claudine, an elderly woman, allows Verezzi to stay at her cottage. Verezzi saves Matilda from jumping off of a bridge. She befriends him. Matilda seeks to persuade Verezzi to marry her. Verezzi, however, is in love with Julia. Matilda provides lodging for Verezzi at her castle or mansion estate near Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
. Her tireless efforts to seduce him are unsuccessful.
Zastrozzi concocts a plan to torture and to torment Verezzi. He spreads a false rumor that Julia has died, exclaiming to Matilda: "Would Julia of Strobazzo's heart was reeking on my dagger!" Verezzi is convinced that Julia is dead. Distraught and emotionally shattered, he then relents and offers to marry Matilda.
The truth is revealed that Julia is still alive. Verezzi is so distressed at his betrayal that he kills himself. Matilda kills Julia in retaliation. Zastrozzi and Matilda are arrested for murder. Matilda repents. Zastrozzi, however, remains defiant before an inquisition. He is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.
Zastrozzi confesses that he sought revenge against Verezzi because Verezzi's father had deserted his mother, Olivia, who died young, destitute, and in poverty. Zastrozzi blamed his father for the death of his mother, who died before she was thirty. Zastrozzi sought revenge against not only his own father, whom he murdered, but also against "his progeny for ever", his son Verezzi. Verezzi and Zastrozzi had the same father. By murdering his own father, Zastrozzi only killed his corporeal body. By manipulating Verezzi into committing suicide, however, Zastrozzi confessed that his objective was to achieve the eternal damnation of Verezzi's soul based on the proscription of the Christian religion against suicide. Zastrozzi, an outspoken atheist, goes to his death on the rack rejecting and renouncing religion and morality "with a wild convulsive laugh of exulting revenge".
Reception
The Gentleman's MagazineThe Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term "magazine" for a periodical...
, regarded as the first literary magazine, published a favorable review of Zastrozzi in 1810: "A short, but well-told tale of horror, and, if we do not mistake, not from an ordinary pen. The story is so artfully conducted that the reader cannot easily anticipate the denouement." The Critical Review
The Critical Review
The Critical Review was first edited by Tobias Smollett from 1756 to 1763, and was contributed to by Samuel Johnson, David Hume, John Hunter, and Oliver Goldsmith, until 1817....
, a conservative journal with a "reactionary aesthetic agenda", on the other hand, called the main character Zastrozzi "one of the most savage and improbable demons that ever issued from a diseased brain." The reviewer dismissed the novel: "We know not when we have felt so much indignation as in the perusal of this execrable production. The author of it cannot be too severely reprobated. Not all his 'scintillated eyes,' his 'battling emotions,' his 'frigorific torpidity of despair'... ought to save him from infamy, and his volume from the flames."
Zastrozzi was republished in 1839 in The Romancist and Novelist's Library, No. 10, published in London by J. Clements.
Eustace Chesser
Eustace Chesser
Eustace Chesser was a Scottish psychiatrist, social reformer and writer.-Life and career:He was born in Edinburgh to Russian immigrants and attended George Watson's College. He received his medical degree from the University of Edinburgh. In 1940 he published a sex manual entitled Love Without Fear...
, in Shelley and Zastrozzi (1965), analyzed the novel as a complex psychological thriller: "When I first came across Zastrozzi I was immediately struck by its resemblance to the dream material with which every psychoanalyst is familiar. It was not a story told with the detachment of a professional writer for the entertainment of the public. Whatever the conscious intention of the young Shelley, he was in fact, writing for himself. He was opening the floodgates of the unconscious and allowing its fantasies to pour out unrestrainedly. He was betraying, unwittingly, the emotional problems that agitated his adolescent mind." Patrick Bridgwater, in Kafka, Gothic and Fairytale (2003), argued that the novel anticipated Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
's work in the twentieth century.
Stylistically, the novel reveals several flaws. The most striking flaw is missing chapters, although some critics and editors have argued that Shelley intended this omission as a prank. At about one hundred pages, the novel is shorter than most Gothic novels, which prevents a more thorough and complete development of the characters. In the middle sections of the novel, moreover, there is not enough variation in the setting. There is a primary focus on Verezzi and Matilda at the exclusion of the other characters and at the expense of the plot development. Shelley also experiments with word selection and structure which tends to slow down the flow of the story.
Adaptations
In 1977, Canadian playwright George F. WalkerGeorge F. Walker
George F. Walker, CM is a Canadian playwright and screenwriter. He is one of Canada's most prolific playwrights, and also one of the most widely produced Canadian dramatists both in Canada and internationally.-Early years:...
wrote a successful play adaptation called Zastrozzi: Master of Discipline based on the Shelley novel. The play was based on a plot summary of the Shelley novel, but in and of itself was something "rather different from the novel," in the author's words. The play has been revived on several occasions and is part of the 2009 season of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Walker's play retains all the major characters of the Shelley novel, the core plot, and the moral and ethical issues relating to revenge and retribution and atheism.
In 1986, Channel Four Films in Britain produced a four-part television mini-series of the Shelley novel Zastrozzi, adapted and directed by David G. Hopkins and produced by Lindsey C. Vickers and David Lascelles, which was also shown on American television. Mark McGann
Mark McGann
Mark McGann is an English actor, director and musician.- Acting career :McGann first appeared on stage in 1981 in the production Lennon at the Everyman Theatre and the London Astoria where he portrayed John Lennon, role which won him the first of his two Olivier Award nominations for best actor in...
played Verezzi, Academy Award-winning actress Tilda Swinton
Tilda Swinton
Katherine Mathilda "Tilda" Swinton is a British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films. She has appeared in a number of films including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, The Beach, We Need to Talk About Kevin and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her...
played Julia, Max Wall
Max Wall
Max Wall , was an English comedian and actor, whose performing career covered music hall, theatre, films and television.-Early years:...
was the Priest, while Zastrozzi was played by newcomer Geff Francis
Geff Francis
Geoffrey "Geff" Francis, most known as Geff Francis is a Black British actor who portrayed Lynford, a hoodlum in For Queen and Country...
. The production consisted of four 52-minute episodes. In 1990, Jeremy Isaacs
Jeremy Isaacs
Sir Jeremy Isaacs is a British television producer and executive, winner of many BAFTA awards and international Emmy Awards. He was also General Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden .-Early life:...
named the four-hour dramatisation of the early Shelley novel, Zastrozzi (1986), as one of the 10 programmes of which he was most proud during his tenure as Channel 4's chief executive.
Shelley's later prose fiction
In 1811, Shelley wrote a follow-up novel to Zastrozzi called St. IrvyneSt. Irvyne
St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian, A Romance is a Gothic horror novel written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1810 and published by John Joseph Stockdale in 1811 in London anonymously as "by a Gentleman of the University of Oxford". The main character is Wolfstein, a solitary wanderer, who encounters...
; or, The Rosicrucian, A Romance, about an alchemist
Alchemy
Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...
who sought to impart the secret of immortality, published by John Joseph Stockdale
John Joseph Stockdale
John Joseph Stockdale was an English publisher and editor with something of a reputation as a pornographer...
, at 41 Pall Mall
Pall Mall
-Places:* Pall Mall, urban downtown ares of Bendigo, Australia* Pall Mall, London, a street in the City of Westminster, London* Pall Mall, Tennessee, a small unincorporated community in Fentress County, Tennessee...
, in London, which relied more on the supernatural than did Zastrozzi, which was imbued with Romantic realism.
The principal fictional prose writings of Shelley are Zastrozzi, St. Irvyne, the chapbook Wolfstein (1815–18), The Coliseum (1817), Una Favola (A Fable), written in Italian, A True Story (attributed to him) from the 1820 Indicator by Leigh Hunt, which is almost identical to the poem The Sunset (1816), The Elysian Fields: A Lucianic Fragment, which presents fictional fantasy with political commentary, and The Assassins, A Fragment of a Romance (1814), an unfinished novella about a morality-driven sect of zealots determined to kill the tyrants and oppressive dictators in the world. Shelley also wrote the preface and contributed at least 4,000–5,000 words to the Gothic novel Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
(1818) by his wife Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
.
Sources
-
- Lauritsen, John. The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein. Dorchester, MA: Pagan Press, 2007.
- Chesser, Eustace. Shelley and Zastrozzi: Self-Revelation of a Neurotic. London: Gregg/Archive, 1965. Eustace Chesser: "The story itself had the incoherence of a dream because that is just what it was - a day dream in which our conscious conflicts were worked out in disguise."
- Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Zastrozzi. With a Foreword by Germaine GreerGermaine GreerGermaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....
. London: Hesperus PressHesperus PressHesperus Press is an independent publisher based in London, UK. It was founded in 2001 by Alessandro Gallenzi and Elisabetta Minervini, who went on to found Alma Books in 2005....
, 2002. Germaine Greer: "The whole novel treats a love that still dare not speak its name, the love of a juvenile for adult women." - Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Zastrozzi: A Romance; St. Irvyne, or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes by Stepehen C. Behrendt. Peterborough, Ont., Canada: Broadview Press, 2002.
- Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne. (The World's Classics). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
- Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Harry Buxton Forman, 8 volumes. London: Reeves and Turner, 1880.
- Rajan, Tilottama. "Promethean Narrative: Overdetermined Form in Shelley's Gothic Fiction." Shelley: Poet and Legislator of the World, ed. Betty T. Bennett and Stuart Curran (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 240-52, 308-9.
- Zimansky, Curt R. (1981). "Zastrozzi and The Bravo of Venice: Another Shelley Borrowing." Keats-Shelley Journal, 30, pp. 15–17.
- Frosch, Thomas R. Shelley and the Romantic Imagination: A Psychological Study. University of Delaware Press, 2007.
- Bridgwater, Patrick. Kafka, Gothic and Fairytale. Rodopi, 2003. Patrick Bridgwater: "Zastrozzi is more interesting than it is generally allowed: ... it comes into its own when considered side by side with Kafka's work."
- Hughes, A.M.D. (1912). Shelley’s Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne. Modern Language Review.
- Hughes, A.M.D. The Nascent Mind of Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947.
- Seed, David. (1984). "Mystery and Monodrama in Shelley's Zastrozzi." Dutch Quarterly Review, 14.i, pp. 1–17.
- Day, Aidan. Romanticism. NY: Routledge, 1996.
- Shepherd, Richard Herne, ed. The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: From the Original Editions. London: Chatto and Windus, 1888.
- Crook, Nora and Derek Guiton. Shelley's Venomed Melody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
- Bonca, Teddi Chichester. Shelley's Mirrors of Love: Narcissism, Sacrifice, and Sorority. NY: SUNY Press, 1999.
- Clark, Timothy. (1993). "Shelley's 'The Coliseum' and the Sublime." Durham University Journal, 225-235.
- Duffy, Cian. (2003). "Revolution or Reaction? Shelley's 'Assassins' and the Politics of Necessity." Keats-Shelley Journal, Vol. 52, pp. 77–93.
- Duffy, Cian. Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
- Clark, Timothy. Embodying Revolution: The Figure of the Poet in Shelley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
- Kiley, Brendan. "Zastrozzi: Percy Shelley’s Murder-Revenge Camp." The Stranger, Seattle, WA, October 28, 2009.
- Barker, Jeremy M. "The Balagan's Zastrozzi Delivers Sex & Violence Without a Pesky Purpose." The Sun Break, October 12, 2009.
- "Zastrozzi and the Price of Passion." Viva Victoriana, September 9, 2009.
- Glance, Jonathan. (1996). "'Beyond the Usual Bounds of Reverie'? Another Look at the Dreams in Frankenstein." Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 7.4: 30-47. Mary Shelley read the novel Zastrozzi in 1814. There are "analogous" dream images and themes in both novels: "The final and closest analogue to Victor Frankenstein's dream occurs in Percy Shelley's Zastrozzi (1810)."
- Simpkins, Scott. "Encoding Masculinity in the Gothic Novel: Shelley's Zastrozzi." California Semiotic Circle Conference, January, 1997, Berkeley, CA.
- Neilson, Dylan. "Zastrozzi: Master of Stage". The Gauntlet, January 27, 2005.
- Halliburton, David G. (Winter, 1967). "Shelley's 'Gothic' Novels." Keats-Shelley Journal, Vol. 16, pp. 39–49.
- "Shelley's Novels." The New York Times, November 28, 1886.
- Sigler, David. "The Act of Objectification in P.B. Shelley‟s Zastrozzi." International Conference on Romanticism (ICR), Towson University, Baltimore, MD, October, 2007.
- Young, A. B. (1906). "Shelley and M.G. Lewis." Modern Language Review, 1: pp. 322–324.
- Rich, Frank. "Stage: Serban Directs 'Zastrozzi' at the Public." New York Times, January 18, 1962.
- Simpkins, Scott. "Tricksterism in the Gothic Novel." The American Journal of Semiotics, January 1, 1997.
- Cottom, Daniel. "Gothic Pathologies: The Text, The Body and The Law." Studies in Romanticism, December 22, 2000.
- Hagopian, John V. (1955). "A Psychological Approach to Shelley's Poetry." American Imago, 12: 25-45.
- Livingston, Luther S. "First Books Of Some English Authors: Percy Bysshe Shelley." The Bookman, XII, 4, December, 1900.
External links
- LibriVox audiorecording of Zastrozzi, A Romance by Percy Bysshe Shelley, read by Martin Geeson.
- Online edition of Zastrozzi on the Project Gutenberg website.
- The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Volume 1
- "A British Adaptation of Shelley's Zastrozzi", New York Times, October 16, 1986
- Zastrozzi, A Romance (1986) - UK television mini-series on IMDB.
- May they be divided never: Ethics, History, and the Rhetorical Imagination in Shelley's The Coliseum by Kevin Binfield, Keats Shelley Journal, 1997