The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron

This Handbook presents forty-four groundbreaking chapters that explore Lord Byron's central position in Romantic traditions and his profound and far-reaching influence on British, European, and world culture.

List of contents

• Introduction


• Part I. Works


• 1: Shobhana Bhattacharji: Byron's Early Poetical Practices


• 2: Stephen Minta: The Landscapes of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage I and II


• 3: Anna Camilleri: Gender and Genre in the 'Turkish Tales' (1813-16)


• 4: Jonathon Shears: Byron's Lyric Poetry


• 5: Bernard Beatty: Byron's 'Dramatic Monologues': The Prisoner of Chillon, Mazeppa, 'The Lament of Tasso', The Prophecy of Dante


• 6: Philip Shaw: Exile and Sublimity: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage III, the Separation Poems, and 'Darkness'


• 7: Lilla Maria Crisafulli: Byron in Transit: Italy in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage IV and Beppo


• 8: Arnold Anthony Schmidt: Uses of the Past in the History Plays


• 9: Drummond Bone: Don Juan, Cantos I to IV


• 10: Diego Saglia: Don Juan in the Ottoman East: Dis/Continuities in Cantos V-VIII


• 11: Gary Dyer: Text and Time in Don Juan, Cantos IX to XII


• 12: Jane Stabler: The Textuality and Intertextuality of Don Juan, Cantos XIII-XVII


• 13: Mirka Horová: The Metaphysical Dramas: Playing Against All Odds


• 14: Matthew Ward: Byron's Poetic Endings: The Deformed Transformed, The Vision of Judgment, The Island, and 'On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year'


• 15: Anthony Howe: Byron's Letters


• Part II. Biographical Contexts


• 16: John Beckett: Byron the Aristocrat


• 17: Roderick Beaton: Byron at Home and Abroad


• 18: Jeffery Vail: Byron: Libertine, Friend, and Lover


• 19: Andrew M. Stauffer: Byron Contra Mundum


• Part III. Literary and Cultural Contexts


• 20: Jonathan Sachs: The Classical Inheritance: Byron and the 'literary lower Empire'


• 21: Nicholas Gayle: Byron, Pope, and the Mock-Epic


• 22: Peter Graham: Byron and the Novel


• 23: Simon Bainbridge: Byron and the Lake Poets


• 24: Jeffrey N. Cox: 'The Satanic School': Hunt, the Cockneys, and The Liberal


• 25: Michael Simpson: Byron and the Theatre: Conjuring the Amphitheatre of Poetry, Press, and Provocation


• 26: Alan Rawes: Byron and Italian Literature


• 27: Mary O'Connell: Byron and Regency Print Culture


• Part IV. Afterlives


• 28: Maria Schoina: Byron's Reviewers


• 29: Jonathan Gross: Byron Biographies, 1824 to the Present: The Shaping of Byron's Legacy


• 30: Clara Tuite: Byron and World Literature


• 31: Sarah Wootton: Byron and the Victorians


• 32: Piya Pal-Lapinski: Byron Le Diable: The Byronic Hero and the Demonic in Music from Berlioz to Tchaikovsky


• 33: Christine Kenyon Jones: Byron's Works in Visual Art


• 34: Mark Sandy: Byron in Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century Literature


• 35: Carla Pomarè: Byron and the Critics in the New Millenium


• 36: Joanna E. Taylor: Isn't it Byronic: Reading Byron in the Social Media Age


• 37: Paul Curtis: Editing Byron and Digital Futures


• Part V. Reading Byron Now


• 38: Martin Procházka: Byron and Nationalism


• 39: Jonathon Shears: Reading Byron's Body and Mind


• 40: Hermione de Almeida: Fluid Dynamics: Geology and Evolutionary Physics in Byron


• 41: Will Bowers: Byron's Cosmopolitanism


• 42: Ghislaine McDayter: The life we image': Byron and Sexuality


• 43: Tom Mole: Byron's Celebrity Revisited


• 44: Carl Thompson: Byron and Travel


• Afterword: Byron and the Age of the poète maudit

About the author

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.

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.

Product details

• Authors: Jonathon/ Rawes Shears
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 03.01.2025
• EAN: 9780198808800
• ISBN: 978-0-19-880880-0
• Dimensions: 178 mm x 241 mm x 51 mm
• Series: Oxford Handbooks
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, Literary studies: poetry & poets, Literary studies: poetry and poets