Blood, blasphemy and bad dads: blasphemy and The Cenci

The Cenci’s themes of incest, sexual violence and religious irreverence invited many contemporary accusations of blasphemy. This article nevertheless contends that blasphemy is also a significant concept within the play itself; accusations of blasphemy are perceived as a fraudulent way to shore up seemingly unimpeachable existing, tyrannical political systems. In this way, such charges in the drama are curiously metafictional, not only seeming to anticipate the play’s own reception but to reflect on the application of a revolutionary poetics to the politics of Shelley’s own time. This article suggests that in its exploration and critique of power, The Cenci reveals Shelley’s conception of the intersection between, and mutual interdependence of, political, religious and patriarchal tyranny. This article concludes that, for Shelley, it is in unpacking and rejecting the reverence placed on these interlocking sacred systems of authority, what may be labelled as “blaspheming”, that is an ultimately necessary part of any successful revolutionary poetics.