Reading Byron: Poems - Life - Politics

281 Pages·2023·2.443 MB·English

by  Bernard Beatty

Reading Byron
LIVERPOOL ENGLISH TEXTS AND STUDIES 92
READING BYRON
Poems – Life – Politics
BERNARD BEATTY

introduced by Jerome McGann
edited by David Woodhouse
and concluded in conversation with Gavin Hopps
Reading Byron
LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS
First published 2022 by
Liverpool University Press
4 Cambridge Street
Liverpool
L69 7ZU
Copyright © 2022 Liverpool University Press
Bernard Beatty, Gavin Hopps, Jerome McGann and David Woodhouse have
asserted the right to be identified as the authors and editors of this book in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book 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
written permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data
A British Library CIP record is available
ISBN 978-1-80085-462-8
eISBN 978-1-80085-529-8
Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster
in memory of
Vincent Newey
1943–2020

Contents
contents
List of Illustrations ix
Abbreviations xi
Notes on Author and Contributors xiii
Author’s Foreword xv
Introduction by Jerome McGann 1
PART I: POEMS
Reading Byron’s Poems 10
1 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: Types of History 17
2 Lara: Acts of Will 37
3 Understanding Manfred: The Sense of an Ending 59
4 Cain: One Drama, Two Orthodoxies 85
5 Empty Spaces in Don Juan: A Reading of the Norman
Abbey Cantos 115
PART II: LIFE
Reading Byron’s Life 138
6 At Albany 141
7 At Seaham 153
8 From Venice to Ravenna 169
vii
reading byron
PART III: POLITICS
Reading Byron’s Politics 184
9 Liberty and Licence 187
10 The Paradoxes of Nationalism 197
11 Byron as Political Icon 207
Conversations with Gavin Hopps 221
Bernard Beatty: A Bibliography 241
Acknowledgements 249
General Bibliography 251
Index 259
viii
Illustrations
Illustrations
1. Albany in 1830 after a drawing by Thomas H. Shepherd.
Byron’s rooms were on the ground floor at the back of the
house. 140
2. Seaham Hall in the mid-nineteenth century. 154
3. Palazzo Guiccioli, Ravenna. Byron’s study (in which he
wrote Cain) is on the second floor immediately to the right
of the balcony. 171
ix

Abbreviations
Abbreviations
BCH Byron: The Critical Heritage, ed. Andrew Rutherford
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970).
BLJ Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. Leslie Marchand, 13 vols
(London: John Murray, 1974–94).
CHP Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (all references are to
Canto and stanza unless otherwise stated).
CMP Lord Byron: The Complete Miscellaneous Prose, ed. Andrew
Nicholson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
CPW Lord Byron: Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann
and Barry Weller, 7 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980–93).
CVA Lord Byron’s Cain: Twelve Essays and a Text with Variants and
Annotations, ed. Truman Guy Steffan (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1968).
DJ Byron’s Don Juan (all references are to Canto and stanza
unless otherwise stated).
HVSV His Very Self and Voice: Collected Conversations of Lord Byron,
ed. Ernest J. Lovell Jr (New York: Macmillan, 1954).
PL Paradise Lost (all references are to Book and line number
using the text in The Complete Poems of John Milton, ed.
B.A. Wright [London: Dent, new edition 1980]).
All references to Byron’s poems other than CHP and DJ use the line
numbers of CPW unless otherwise stated (for some shorter or interpolated
poems, a page reference is provided for ease of location). References to
the Bible are to the Authorized King James Version. Quotations (and
line numberings) are taken from the following editions: The Poetry of
John Keats, ed. Jack Stillinger (London: Heinemann, 1978); The Poems
of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt (one-volume Twickenham edition,
xi