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
Fantasy, Forgery and Byron Legend

Fantasy, Forgery and Byron Legend

Soderholm, James

Hardcover

Literary CriticismGeneral Poetry

ISBN10: 0813119391
ISBN13: 9780813119397
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: Nov 9 1995
Pages: 224
Weight: 0.94
Height: 0.86 Width: 5.82 Depth: 8.81
Language: English

Byron was--to echo Wordsworth--half-perceived and half-created. He would have affirmed Jean Baudrillard's observation that to seduce is to die to reality and reconstitute oneself as illusion. But among the readers he seduced, in person and in poetry, were women possessed of vivid imaginations who collaborated with him in fashioning his legend. Accused of treating women harshly, Byron acknowledged: It may be so--but I have been their martyr. My whole life has been sacrificed to them and by them. Those whom he spell bound often returned the favor in their own writings tried to remake his public image to reflect their own.

Through writings both well known and generally unknown, James Soderholm examines the poet's relationship with five women: Elizabeth Pigot, Caroline Lamb, Annabella Milbanke, Teresa Guiccioli, and Marguerite Blessington. These women participated in Byron's life and literary career and the manipulation of images that is the Byron legend.

Soderholm argues against the sentimental depictions of biographers who would preserve Byron's romantic aura by diminishing the contributions of these women to his social, sexual, and literary identity. By restoring the contexts in which literary works charm or bedevil particular readers, the author shows the consequences of Byron's poetic seductions during and after his life.

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