The papers collected in this volume, first published in 1993, were delivered at Hofstra University in October 1988 at a conference celebrating the bicentennial of Lord Byron’s birth. The shared goal of these essays was to reassess Byron’s poetry, his poetic development, and his relation to his contemporaries in light of recent scholarship and criticism. This title will be of interest to students of literature.

Lord Byron (1788-1824) was a poet and satirist, as famous in his time for his love affairs and questionable morals as he was for his poetry. Looking beyond the scandal, Byron leaves us a body of work that proved crucial to the development of English poetry and provides a fascinating counterpoint to other writings of the Romantic period. This guide to Byron’s sometimes daunting, often extraordinary work offers: an accessible introduction to the contexts and many interpretations of Byron’s texts, from publication to the present an introduction to key critical texts and perspectives on Byron’s life and work, situated in a broader critical history cross-references between sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism suggestions for further reading. Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of Byron and seeking not only a guide to his works but also a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds them.

"Elledge carefully examines the historical and biographical contexts to Byron's Harrow performances, showing their relevance to Byron's physical and psychic landscapes at the time - his connections to his mother and half-sister, his headmasters and tutors, his Harrow intimates and rivals, his lameness, his London theatrical spectatorship. Byron's performances in the characters of King Latinus from the Aeneid, Zanga the Moor from Edward Young's The Revenge, and King Lear provide an opportunity to examine his early experiments with self-presentation: as Elledge argues, these performances are "auditions or trials of performative and autotherapeutic strategies, subsequently refined and polished in the mature verse." Throughout, Elledge reads the boy for the sake of reading the poet; he shows how young Byron's introduction to theatricality at Harrow School prepared him to make a confident and spectacular debut on Europe's cultural stage."--BOOK JACKET.

In her study of the relationship between Byron’s lifelong interest in historical matters and the development of history as a discipline, Carla Pomarè focuses on drama (the Venetian plays, The Deformed Transformed), verse narrative (The Siege of Corinth, Mazeppa) and dramatic monologue (The Prophecy of Dante), calling attention to their interaction with historiographical and pseudo-historiographical texts ranging from monographs to dictionaries, collections of apophthegms, autobiographies and prophecies. This variety of discourses, Pomarè suggests, not only served as a source of the historical information Byron cherished, providing the subject matter for countless episodes in his works, but also and primarily supplied him with epistemological models. From them, Byron drew such trademark textual practices as his massive use of notes and paratexts, which satisfied his ingrained need for ’authenticity’ - a sentiment expressed in his oft-quoted, ’I hate things all fiction’. As Pomarè argues, Byron’s meticulous tracing of the process that links events, documents and historical representations ultimately answers his desire to retrieve what might be lost during the transmission of historical knowledge. Thus does he betray his preoccupation with the ideological uses of history writing, projecting his own discourses of history into the present of their composition.

This collection presents twelve outstanding new essays on Byron by leading critics from the USA, Canada and the UK including Steven Bruhm, Peter Cochran, Paul Curtis, Caroline Franklin, Peter Kitson, Ghislaine McDayter, Tim Morton, David Punter and Pamela Kao, Michael Simpson, Philip Shaw, Nanora Sweet and Susan Wolfson.

Published in 1999. Lord Byron and Madam de Stael made a great impression on Europe in the throes of the Napoleonic Wars, through their personalities, the versions of themselves which they projected through their works, and their literary engagement with contemporary life. However, the strong links between them have never before been explored in detail. This pioneering study looks at their personal relations, from their verbal sparring in Regency society, through the friendship which developed in Switzerland after Byron left England in 1816, to Byron’s tributes to Mme de Stael after her death. It concentrates on their literary links, both direct responses to each other’s works, and the copious evidence of shared concerns. The study deals with their treatment of gender, their grappling with the possibilities for heroic endeavour, their engagement with the social and political situations of Britain, France and Italy, and their conceptions of the role of the writer. Although Byron will need no introduction, Mme de Stael’s standing as a French romantic writer of the first rank is made plain by the strong impact of her writings on the English Poet.

Byron and Women [and men] is a compilation of new biographical and literary essays, examining the poet’s bisexuality and the ways in which it affected his poetry and drama. Areas covered are Byron and gender-studies (a general introduction); Byron’s Boyfriends (an aspect of his life which has traditionally been neglected); the Male Gaze in the Oriental Tales; homosexuality in Venice; Byron’s Nottinghamshire love-life; sex and gender in Don Juan; bisexuality in Byron and Shakespeare; and Byron’s heroines contrasted with those of Mozart. The volume has as appendices new editions of the notorious poems Don Leon and Leon to Annbella, with startling theories as to their authorship.

Taking a fresh approach to Byron, this book argues that he should be understood as a poet whose major works develop a carefully reasoned philosophy. Situating him with reference to the thought of the period, it argues for Byron as an active thinker, whose final philosophical stance - reader-centred scepticism - has extensive practical implications.

Orientalist Poetics is the only book on literary orientalism that spans the nineteenth century in both England and France with particular attention to poetry and poetics. It convincingly demonstrates orientalism's centrality to the evolution of poetry and poetics in both nations, and provides a singularly comprehensive and definitive analysis of the aesthetic impact of orientalism on nineteenth-century poetry. Because it examines the poetry of the entire century across both national literatures, the book is in a unique position to articulate the essential part orientalism plays in major developments of nineteenth-century poetics. Through probing discussions of an array of prominent nineteenth-century poets-including Shelley, Southey, Byron, Hugo, Musset, Leconte de Lisle, Wordsworth, Hemans, Gautier, Tennyson, Arnold and Wilde-Emily A. Haddad reveals how orientalism functions as a diffuse avant-garde, a crucial medium for the cultivation and refinement of a broad range of experimental positions on poetry and poetics. Haddad argues that while orientalist poems are often viewed mainly as artefacts of European attitudes towards the East and imperialism, poetic representations of the Islamic Orient also provide an indispensable matrix for the reexamination of such aesthetically fundamental issues as the purpose of poetry, the value of mimesis, and the relationship between nature and art. Orientalist Poetics effectively bridges the gap between the analysis of poetics and the analysis of orientalism. In showing that major poetic developments have roots in orientalism, Haddad's book offers a valuable and innovative revisionist view of nineteenth-century literary history.

Colligan argues that Nineteenth-century obscenity was caught up in the global cultural traffic of print technology, international trade and exoticism. She reveals that obscenity intersected majority and minority culture, searched out new print and visual media, and built commercial and fantasmatic global networks for its continuation and survival.