Byron and the Politics of Freedom and Terror


Book Description

This interdisciplinary collection explores the divergence or convergence of freedom and terror in a range of Byron's works. Challenging the binary opposition of historicism and critical theory, it combines topical debates in a manner that is sensitive both to the circumstances of their emergence and to their relevance for the twenty-first century.




Byron: The Poetry of Politics and the Politics of Poetry


Book Description

'It is no great matter, supposing that Italy could be liberated, who or what is sacrificed. It is a grand object - the very poetry of politics. Only think - a free Italy!!! Why, there has been nothing like it since the days of Augustus.' So wrote Lord Byron in his journal, in February 1821, only days before the outbreak of revolution in Greece, where three years later he would die in the service of the revolutionary cause. For a poet whose life and work are interlaced with action of multiple sorts, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to Byron's engagement with issues of politics. This volume brings together the work of eminent Byronists from seven European countries and the USA to re-assess the evidence. What did Byron mean by the 'poetry of politics'? Was he, in any sense, a 'political animal'? Can his final, fateful involvement in Greece be understood as the culmination of earlier, more deeply rooted quests? The first part of the book examines the implications of reading and writing as themselves political acts; the second interrogates the politics inherent or implied in Byron's poems and plays; the third follows the trajectory of his political engagement (or non-engagement), from his abortive early career in the British House of Lords, via the Peninsular War in Spain to his involvement in revolutionary politics abroad.




Byron and Italy


Book Description

Winner of the Elma Dangerfield Prize 2018 Byron in Italy – Venetian debauchery, Roman sight-seeing, revolution, horse-riding and swimming, sword-brandishing and pistol-shooting, the poet’s ‘last attachment’ – forms part of the fabric of Romantic mythology. Yet Byron’s time in Italy was crucial to his development as a writer, to Italy’s sense of itself as a nation, to Europe’s perceptions of national identity and to the evolution of Romanticism across Europe. In this volume, Byron scholars from Britain, Europe and beyond re-assess the topic of ‘Byron and Italy’ in all its richness and complexity. They consider Byron’s relationship to Italian literature, people, geography, art, religion and politics, and discuss his navigations between British and Italian identities.




Byron: The Poetry of Politics and the Politics of Poetry


Book Description

'It is no great matter, supposing that Italy could be liberated, who or what is sacrificed. It is a grand object - the very poetry of politics. Only think - a free Italy!!! Why, there has been nothing like it since the days of Augustus.' So wrote Lord Byron in his journal, in February 1821, only days before the outbreak of revolution in Greece, where three years later he would die in the service of the revolutionary cause. For a poet whose life and work are interlaced with action of multiple sorts, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to Byron's engagement with issues of politics. This volume brings together the work of eminent Byronists from seven European countries and the USA to re-assess the evidence. What did Byron mean by the 'poetry of politics'? Was he, in any sense, a 'political animal'? Can his final, fateful involvement in Greece be understood as the culmination of earlier, more deeply rooted quests? The first part of the book examines the implications of reading and writing as themselves political acts; the second interrogates the politics inherent or implied in Byron's poems and plays; the third follows the trajectory of his political engagement (or non-engagement), from his abortive early career in the British House of Lords, via the Peninsular War in Spain to his involvement in revolutionary politics abroad.




The Poet-Hero in the Work of Byron and Shelley


Book Description

Byron’s and Shelley’s experimentation with the possibilities and pitfalls of poetic heroism unites their work. The Poet-Hero in the Work of Byron and Shelley traces the evolution of the poet-hero in the work of both poets, revealing that the struggle to find words adequate to the poet’s imaginative vision and historical circumstance is their central poetic achievement. Madeleine Callaghan explores the different types of poetic heroism that evolve in Byron’s and Shelley’s poetry and drama. Both poets experiment with, challenge and embrace a variety of poetic forms and genres, and this book discusses such generic exploration in the light of their developing versions of the poet-hero. The heroism of the poet, as an idea, an ideal and an illusion, undergoes many different incarnations and definitions as both poets shape distinctive and changing conceptions of the hero throughout their careers.




Byron’s Poetry


Book Description

Byron’s dubious status as a sex object, and his even more dubious status as a political icon, serves to disguise the fact that he is one of the greatest of all English poets, with a European reputation second only to Shakespeare. The fact that writers such as Goethe and Pushkin held him in the highest regard ensures that the English continue to despise him, and ignore his verse as much as possible. This book ignores his sexuality, his politics, and his iconography, and concentrates on his poems. Written by leading authorities such as Bernard Beatty, Germaine Greer and Michael O’Neill, it contains essays on his verse-forms and his comic rhymes, as well as thematic analyses on such recurrent Byronic themes as the Sea, Will-o’-the-Wisps, and Love versus Knowledge. In the face of many modern books which translate his verse into prose and try without success to analyse the result, Byron’s Poetry puts his real achievement – as a creative writer – back into the focus of discussion.




Byron and Latin Culture


Book Description

Byron and Latin Culture consists of twenty-three papers, most of which were given at the 37th International Byron Conference at Valladolid, Spain, in July 2011. An introduction by the editor describes in detail the huge influence which the major Latin poets had on Byron: his borrowings, imitations, parodies, and echoes have never been catalogued in such detail, and it becomes clear that many ideas central to Don Juan, in particular, derive from Ovid, Virgil, Petronius, Martial and the other great classical writers. There are substantial sections on the ways Byron was influenced by, and in turn influenced, the literature and art of France, Spain, Italy, and other nations. Contributors include John Clubbe, Richard Cardwell, Madeleine Callaghan, Alice Levine, Itsuyo Higashinaka, Olivier Feignier, Katherine Kernberger, and Stephen Minta.




Byron's War


Book Description

Roderick Beaton re-examines Lord Byron's life and writing through the long trajectory of his relationship with Greece. Beginning with the poet's youthful travels in 1809–1811, Beaton traces his years of fame in London and self-imposed exile in Italy, that culminated in the decision to devote himself to the cause of Greek independence. Then comes Byron's dramatic self-transformation, while in Cephalonia, from Romantic rebel to 'new statesman', subordinating himself for the first time to a defined, political cause, in order to begin laying the foundations, during his 'hundred days' at Missolonghi, for a new kind of polity in Europe – that of the nation-state as we know it today. Byron's War draws extensively on Greek historical sources and other unpublished documents to tell an individual story that also offers a new understanding of the significance that Greece had for Byron, and of Byron's contribution to the origin of the present-day Greek state.




Foreign Fighters and Multinational Armies


Book Description

This book showcases new historical research on foreign soldiers, including an overview of the early modern period and numerous case studies which cover the last 175 years and stretch over 5 continents. The last two decades have seen the term ‘foreign fighter’ enter our everyday vocabulary. The insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Syrian Civil War and the rise and fall of the Islamic State group have sparked public interest in the phenomenon of people choosing to leave their own country and fight in a foreign conflict. Foreign fighters, their origins, motives, activities and potential danger to their home countries have become subjects of debate, attracting contributions from politicians, military personnel, the media, political scientists, legal scholars but to a much lesser extent from historians. The ten essayss in this volume showcase new historical research on foreign military labour. The aim of the volume is to better understand the experiences and challenges faced by both the foreigners and the host country, particularly its armed forces, and to highlight the significance of these trends to the contemporary debate on foreign fighters. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal European Review of History.




Byron’s Romantic Politics


Book Description

Byron exists in two incompatible dimensions: as fully-documented history, and as romantic myth. Often the myth predominates, describing him as a passionate lover, a staunch friend, a great romantic poet, a champion of the working man, a loyal author to his publisher, and a fighter for democracy who sacrificed his life for the Freedom of Greece. This book attempts to prove that the verifiable truth often proves him to be the opposite. Using letters from Byron’s family, friends, and associates which have never been transcribed, collected and sequenced before, Peter Cochran argues that the poet was an unscrupulous sponger on his relatives and friends, that he harboured a horror at the idea of empowering the working man, had no time for democracy, and despised his publisher. His contempt for the Greeks is clear from everything he writes about them, and his motives for going to Greece at the end of his life (which Cochran analyses in more depth than they have ever been analysed before), were a disturbing mixture of self-indulgent fantasy and death-wish. Using large amounts of manuscript evidence, Cochran further argues that almost all editions of Byron’s writing do his style very poor service, constituting not contributions to knowledge of him, but additions to the obfuscating myth.