Coleridge, according to Shears, sees Milton as 'a Virgil to his Dante'. The early Coleridge wants to be like Wordsworth in focusing on the mind and its role in determining the nature of the individual. Where Coleridge distinguishes himself from Wordsworth it is in his role as a kind of 'philosopher-poet'. Shears sees the connection between Milton and Coleridge as the latter's opportunity to 'break free' from the shackles of his former friend and poetic ally. Thus, Coleridge reads Milton 'protectively' in order to assert his difference from Wordsworth.
In his reading of Shelley, Shears concentrates on the connections between Satan and Prometheus. Unlike Satan who, in Milton's poem, realises that his powers bind him in a relationship with God, Shelley's Prometheus emerges in this reading as a more autonomous, aesthetically complex figure. In a critique of the Bloomian theory of influence, Shears approaches 'Mont Blanc' not as the counter-sublime to Paradise Lost...