Byron: The Erotic Liberal PDF
Preview Byron: The Erotic Liberal
BYRON: The Erotic Liberal JONATHAN DAVID GROSS ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Page i BYRON The Erotic Liberal Page ii Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1647), Joseph and Potiphar's Wife (1630s). Paul Drey Gallery, New York. Page iii BYRON The Erotic Liberal JONATHAN DAVID GROSS ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham ∙ Boulder ∙ NewYork ∙ Oxford Page iv ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706 12 Hid's Copse Road Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 9JJ, England Copyright © 2001 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Gross, Jonathan David, 1962 Byron : the erotic liberal / Jonathan David Gross. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0742511618 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0742511626 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788–1824—Political and social views. 2. Politics and literature—Great Britian—History—19th century. 3. Political poetry, English—History and criticism. 4. Sentimentalism in literature. 5. Liberalism in literature. 6. Emotions in literature. 7. Sex in literature. I. Title. PR4392.P64 G76 2001 821'.7—dc21 00046351 Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.481992. Page v For Jacqui and Shiri Page vi The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil He is, perhaps, more decidedly the creature of passion in its most intense and indomitable form, than any other living man;—and he certainly has it less under the governance of refined and enlightened intellect than any of the great poets of former times with whom, in other points, he may bear a comparison. The Literary Gazette, February 1818 When a man is tired of what he is, by a natural perversity he sets up for what he is not. If he is a poet, he pretends to be a metaphysician: if he is a patrician in rank and feeling, he would fain be one of the people. His ruling motive is not the love of the people, but of distinction: not of truth, but of singularity. He patronizes men of letters out of vanity, and deserts them from caprice or from the advice of friends. He embarks in an obnoxious publication to provoke censure, and leaves it to shift for itself for fear of scandal. We do not like Sir Walter's gratuitous servility: we like Lord Byron's preposterous liberalism little better. He may affect the principles of equality, but he resumes the privilege of peerage, upon occasion. His Lordship has made great offers of service to the Greeks—money and horses. He is at present in Cephalonia, waiting the event! William Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age, April 1824 Page vii CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix List of Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 1 Byron's Politics of Feeling 15 2 Byron's Politics of Sentimentalism 31 3 Byron and the Story of Joseph: “The Bride of Abydos,” Hebrew Melodies, and Don Juan 55 4 Cosmopolitan Liberalism: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, III, and De l'Allemagne 79 5 “Get[ting] into Lord's Ground”: Byron's Aristocratic Liberalism in the PopeBowles Controversy and Marino Faliero 101 6 “One Half What I Should Say”: Byron's Gay Narrator in Don Juan 129 7 Byron and The Liberal: Periodical and Political Posture 153 8 “Still let me love!”: Byron in Greece 171 Afterword Byron and the Liberal Imagination in America 189 Page viii Bibliography 201 Index 221 About the Author 231 Page ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS would like to thank the University Research Council and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at DePaul University for providing grant support for this project. Dean Michael Mezey and Helen Marlborough, chair of the Department of English, allowed me to complete this manuscript as a fellow in the DePaul Humanities Center, 1999–2000. My thanks to the director, Jackie Taylor, and her assistant, AnnaVaughn, for helping to make this year so productive; to fellows Eric Selinger, Dolores Wilber, and Maria Torres for their constructive comments; and to Shannon Siggeman for superb research assistance. For advice with specific chapters, I am grateful to Ted Anton, Jonathan Arac, Bernard Beatty, Jerome Christensen, Peter Cochran, Andrew Cooper, John Isbell, Helen Marlborough, Andrew Nicholson, Jacqui Russell, and Shailja Sharma. I really cannot adequately express my gratitude to John Clubbe, Peter Graham, Karl Kroeber, Malcolm Kelsall, James Soderholm, and Carl Woodring, who selflessly read the entire work at a late stage and provided important insights and suggestions. Any remaining errors are mine alone. Serena Leigh of Rowman & Littlefield provided very valuable editorial guidance, and Dorothy Bradley and Dave Compton helped turn my manuscript into a book. I would also like to acknowledge Leonard Goldberg, Stephen Salkever, and Houston A. Baker, Jr. for their superb teaching at Haverford and Bryn Mawr colleges. They helped me think about Byron's poetry and politics in new ways. My greatest debts are to my wife, Jacqui Russell, whose love and support enabled me to finish this book, and to my father, Theodore L. Gross, whose erudition, scholarship, and liberalism have been an inspiration.
The list of books you might like
