Byron

by Stabler; Jane

• ISBN13: 9780582303935
• ISBN10: 0582303931
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781317884507
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 1998-09-30
• Publisher: Routledge
• More Book Details

Summary

Often seen as the exception to generalisations about Romanticism, Byron's poetry - and its intricate relationship with a brilliant, scandalous life - has remained a source of controversy throughout the twentieth century. This book brings together recent work on Byron by leading British and American scholars and critics, guiding undergraduate students and sixth-form pupils through the different ways in which new literary theory has enriched readings of Byron's work, and showing how his poetry offers a rewarding focus for questions about the relationship between historical contexts and literary form in the Romantic period.

Diverse and fresh perspectives on canonical texts such as Don Juan, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Manfred are included together with stimulating analyses of less well-known narrative poems, lyrics and dramas. A clearly structured introduction traces key developments in Byron criticism and locates the essays within wider debates in Romantic studies. Detailed headnotes to each essay and a guide to further reading help to orientate the reader and offer pointers for further discussion.

The collection will enable students of English literature, Romantic studies and nineteenth-century cultural studies to assess the contribution that different critical methodologies have made to our understanding of individual poems by Byron, as well as concepts like the Byronic hero and evolving definitions of Romanticism.

Table of Contents

General Editors' Preface	vii
Acknowledgements	ix
List of Abbreviations	xi
Introduction	1	(26)
1920s-1930s: humanism, formalism and literary history	1	(2)
1930s-1940s: formalist, moralist and New Critical approaches	3	(4)
1950s-1960s: genre criticism, romantic mythologies, modernist readings	7	(3)
1960s-1970s: humanism, structuralism, Marxism	10	(4)
1970s-1980s: deconstruction and psychoanalytic approaches	14	(4)
1980s-1990s: new historicism, feminisms, queer theory, new formalisms	18	(5)
Organization of critical readings	23	(4)
Lord Byron's Twin Opposites of Truth [Don Juan]	27	(25)
Jerome J. McGann
The Dramas of Lord Byron: Manfred and Marino Faliero	52	(14)
Daniel P. Watkins
Resolving The Corsair: Lara and The Island	66	(13)
Nigel Leask
`Quiet Cruising o'er the Ocean Woman': Byron's Don Juan and the Woman Question	79	(15)
Caroline Franklin
`Their She Condition': Cross-dressing and the Politics of Gender in Don Juan	94	(16)
Susan J. Wolfson
The Shady Side of the Sword: Bulwer Lytton, Disraeli and Byron's Homosexuality	110	(13)
Andrew Elfenbein
Chasms in Connections: Byron Ending (in) Childe Harold's Pilgrimage 1 and 2	123	(15)
Paul Elledge
The Postmodernism of Childe Harold	138	(14)
William H. Galperin
Authoring the Self: Childe Harold III	152	(14)
Vincent Newey
Marino Faliero and the Fault of Byron's Satire	166	(14)
Jerome Christensen
Byron's Imperceptiveness to the English Word	180	(14)
Peter J. Manning
Don Juan Reconsidered: The Haidee Episode	194	(10)
Anne Barton
The Art of Don Juan: Byron's Metrics	204	(13)
J. Drummond Bone
Notes on Authors	217	(2)
Further Reading	219	(7)
Index	226