The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron

by Shears, Jonathon; Rawes, Alan

• ISBN13: 9780198808800
• ISBN10: 0198808801
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780192536334
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2025-01-03
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron offers the latest in critical thinking about the poet that defined the Romantic era across Europe and beyond. The volume presents forty-four groundbreaking essays that enable readers to assess Lord Byron's central position in Romantic traditions and his profound and far-reaching influence on British, European, and world culture.

The chapters are organized into five sections-'Works', 'Biographical Contexts', 'Literary and Cultural Contexts', 'Afterlives', and 'Reading Byron Now'-that guide readers through the most important issues and frameworks for interpreting Byron. 'Works' presents original readings of Byron's key works and many of his lesser-known ones, giving space to extensive studies of his great epic, Don Juan, and the poem that brought him fame, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. 'Biographical Contexts' invites readers to consider Byron's life through key themes and patterns. 'Literary and Cultural Contexts' sets out the most important intellectual traditions from which Byron's work emerged and in which it developed. 'Afterlives' shows readers the extent of Byron's influence on literature, art, music, and politics in Europe and beyond. 'Reading Byron Now' advances the critical agendas that are shaping Byron Studies today.

The Handbook tackles key themes associated with Byron including the Byronic Hero, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, sexuality, mobility, scepticism, the Gothic, celebrity culture, and much more. For new readers of Byron, the volume provides an excellent grounding in his life and work, and for specialists, it opens up exciting new approaches to an icon of Romantic literature.

Author Biography

Jonathon Shears, Reader in English Literature, Keele University,Alan Rawes, Senior Lecturer in Romanticism, University of Manchester

Jonathon Shears is Reader in English Literature at Keele University. He has published widely on Romantic-period writers including The Romantic Legacy of Paradise Lost (2009) and the co-edited essay collection Byron's Temperament: Essays in Body and Mind (2016) which was awarded the Elma Dangerfield Prize. He edited The Byron Journal from 2012 to 2019 and continues to sit on the Editorial Board. He is also a member of the Executive Committee of The Byron Society. His latest monograph is The Hangover: A Literary and Cultural History (2020).

Alan Rawes is Senior Lecturer in Romanticism at the University of Manchester. His publications include Byron's Poetic Experimentation (2000), English Romanticism and the Celtic World (co-ed., 2003), Romantic Biography (co-ed., 2003), Romanticism and Form (ed., 2007), Reading, Writing and the Influence of Harold Bloom (co-ed., 2010), a special issue of Litteraria Pragensia on 'Byron in Italy' (co-ed., 2014), and Byron and Italy (co-ed., 2017, winner of the 2018 Elma Dangerfield Prize). He is a past editor of The Byron Journal (2005-12) and was Joint President of the International Association of Byron Societies between 2012 and 2023.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Alan Rawes and Jonathon ShearsPart I. Works1. Byron's Early Poetical Practices, Shobhana Bhattacharji2. The Landscapes of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage I and II, Stephen Minta3. Gender and Genre in the 'Turkish Tales' (1813-16), Anna Camilleri4. Byron's Lyric Poetry, Jonathon Shears5. Byron's 'Dramatic Monologues': The Prisoner of Chillon, Mazeppa, 'The Lament of Tasso', The Prophecy of Dante, Bernard Beatty6. Exile and Sublimity: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage III, the Separation Poems, and 'Darkness', Philip Shaw7. Byron in Transit: Italy in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage IV and Beppo, Lilla Maria Crisafulli8. Uses of the Past in the History Plays, Arnold Anthony Schmidt9. Don Juan, Cantos I to IV, Drummond Bone10. Don Juan in the Ottoman East: Dis/Continuities in Cantos V-VIII, Diego Saglia11. Text and Time in Don Juan, Cantos IX to XII, Gary Dyer12. The Textuality and Intertextuality of Don Juan, Cantos XIII-XVII, Jane Stabler13. The Metaphysical Dramas: Playing Against All Odds, Mirka Horová14. Byron's Poetic Endings: The Deformed Transformed, The Vision of Judgment, The Island, and 'On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year', Matthew Ward15. Byron's Letters, Anthony HowePart II. Biographical Contexts16. Byron the Aristocrat, John Beckett17. Byron at Home and Abroad, Roderick Beaton18. Byron: Libertine, Friend, and Lover, Jeffery Vail19. Byron Contra Mundum, Andrew M. StaufferPart III. Literary and Cultural Contexts20. The Classical Inheritance: Byron and the 'literary lower Empire', Jonathan Sachs21. Byron, Pope, and the Mock-Epic, Nicholas Gayle22. Byron and the Novel, Peter Graham23. Byron and the Lake Poets, Simon Bainbridge24. 'The Satanic School': Hunt, the Cockneys, and The Liberal, Jeffrey N. Cox25. Byron and the Theatre: Conjuring the Amphitheatre of Poetry, Press, and Provocation, Michael Simpson26. Byron and Italian Literature, Alan Rawes27. Byron and Regency Print Culture, Mary O'ConnellPart IV. Afterlives28. Byron's Reviewers, Maria Schoina29. Byron Biographies, 1824 to the Present: The Shaping of Byron's Legacy, Jonathan Gross30. Byron and World Literature, Clara Tuite31. Byron and the Victorians, Sarah Wootton32. Byron Le Diable: The Byronic Hero and the Demonic in Music from Berlioz to Tchaikovsky, Piya Pal-Lapinski33. Byron's Works in Visual Art, Christine Kenyon Jones34. Byron in Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century Literature, Mark Sandy35. Byron and the Critics in the New Millenium, Carla Pomarè36. Isn't it Byronic: Reading Byron in the Social Media Age, Joanna E. Taylor37. Editing Byron and Digital Futures, Paul CurtisPart V. Reading Byron Now38. Byron and Nationalism, Martin Procházka39. Reading Byron's Body and Mind, Jonathon Shears40. Fluid Dynamics: Geology and Evolutionary Physics in Byron, Hermione de Almeida41. Byron's Cosmopolitanism, Will Bowers42. The life we image': Byron and Sexuality, Ghislaine McDayter43. Byron's Celebrity Revisited, Tom Mole44. Byron and Travel, Carl ThompsonAfterword: Byron and the Age of the poète maudit, Jerome McGann