This book approaches Byron from a completely new angle: no longer seen in terms of his status as a celebrity and a star on the book-selling market, Byron is instead seen as an outsider both in Regency society and, even more so, for his iconoclastic views of life and literature. Pilgrims in pursuit of non-existing shrines, women as man-eating giants and viragos, cannibalism, suicide, black humour and other provocatively border-crossing topics leave scholars hopelessly at a loss as to where they should categorise Byron and what they should do with his penchant for marginal themes, genres and characters. Byron caters to numerous Romantic clich s (weltschmerz, melancholy, subjectivity), while simultaneously reverting to genres, themes and motifs that cast him as a pre- or even anti-Romantic. This collection will trigger new debates in Byron scholarship and show that terms such as canonicity and marginality tend to be blurry and stand in constant need of re-negotiation.
Author(s): Norbert Lennartz
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 328
Foreword / Robert James, Lord Byron, 13th Baron Byron
Acknowledgements
Editions and Abbreviations
1. Lord Byron, Wandering and Wavering between the Centres and Margins of Romanticism: An Attempt at an Introduction / Norbert Lennartz
I. Byron's Marginalisation in Romantic World Literature
2. Byron and 'Weltliteratur' / Nicholas Halmi
3. Reshaping the Romantic Canon from the Margins: The Medial Construction of 'Byron' in 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' / Ralf Haekel
4. Byron and Romantic Period Neoclassicism / Rolf Lessenich
II. Byron's Marginal Identities and Places
5. 'When a man talks of system, his case is hopeless': Byron at the Margins of Romantic Counterculture / Friederike Wolfrum
6. At the Margins of Europe: Byron's East Revisited and 'The Giaour' / Stephen Minta
7. Literary Forefathers: Byron's Marginalia in Isaac D'Israeli's 'Literary Character of Men of Genius' / Jonathan Gross
III. Cherishing the Marginal – Marginal Genres in Byron
8. 'Like a Flash of Inspiration': Byron’s Marginalised Lyricism in 'Hebrew Melodies' / Michael O’Neill
9. Out of Romanticism: Byron and Romance / Anna Camilleri
10. The Margins of Genius: Byron, Nationalism and the Periodical Reviews / Josefina Tuominen-Pope
IV. On the Provocative Margins of Taste
11. 'Stand not on that brink!': Byron, Gender and Romantic Suicide / Caroline Franklin
12. Byron and the Good Death / Tom Mole
13. At the Margins of Romanticism: The Women of 'Don Juan's' English Cantos / Drummond Bone
V. Marginal Affairs – Visual and Paratextual Aspects in Byron
14. A Marginal Interest? Byron and the Fine Arts / Richard Lansdown
15. 'I ask his pardon for a postscript': Byron’s Epistolary Afterthoughts / Jonathon Shears
List of Contributors
Index
