Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The European Byron: Mobility, Cosmopolitanism, and Chameleon Poetry

The European Byron: Mobility, Cosmopolitanism, and Chameleon Poetry

Gross, Jonathan

Hardcover

Series: Anthem Studies in Global English Literatures, Book 1

Literary Criticism

ISBN10: 1839991429
ISBN13: 9781839991424
Publisher: Anthem Press
Published: Sep 16 2025
Pages: 292
Weight: 1.24
Height: 0.81 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Explores Byron's borrowings from Thomas Moore, Torquato Tasso, Percy Shelley, and so on, and transformations as they manifested themselves in his reading.

Byron concealed himself in various literary disguises, a process he called mobility. In this study of influences on Byron's verse and Byron's European impact, I explore these borrowings and transformations as they manifested themselves in his reading. At issue is the very concept of romantic poetic voice. Framing himself in the tradition of the Irish yet cosmopolitan Thomas Moore, Byron adopted continental guises, imitating both Italian writers and political heroes, such as Dante, Machiavelli, and Tasso in such works as The Lament of Tasso and Don Juan. In establishing an Italian identity, Byron relied upon the Italian writers he translated (Boiardo, Pulci, Dante), Thomas Moore's Fudge Family in Paris, and Shelley's Julian and Maddalo, as well as his transformation of Goethe's Faust in Manfred. This Europeanization of Byron should not conceal the fact that Byron adopted poses from his predecessors, such as Walter Scott, in order to fashion himself as a Scottish poet who also happened to be English. Byron became the writers he read: Moore, Shelley, Wordsworth, Scott, Foscolo, Lady Morgan, and Madame de Staël. Those who imitated Byron, particularly Alexander Pushkin and Adam Mickiewicz, often read him in French translations, but became acute interpreters of his literary example. They explained how the European Byron was created in the nineteenth century, and what it meant to be a Harold in Muscovite Cloak, or a Polish Byron, or any national reincarnation of this complex, chameleon poet.

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