Engaging literature as a primary source material in Lord Byron's Childe Harold's pilgrimage, canto IV / author, Emily Stewart Long (New York University, USA).

Format:

Website/Database

Author/Creator:

Long, Emily Stewart, author.

Contributor:

Adam Matthew Digital (Firm), contributor, commissioning body, digitiser.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Research.

Methodology.

Genre:

Case studies.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Marlborough, Wiltshire : Adam Matthew Digital, 2021.

Summary:

This entry provides a detailed textual analysis of Lord Byron's famous narrative poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV as it appears in the images of the page proofs taken from the John Murray Archive Collection in the National Library of Scotland. The purpose of the entry is to help students engage literature, specifically poetry, as a primary source by approaching Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV as both a material object and a work of art. This entry begins by posing preliminary questions about the source and then moves on to offer some contextual information about the poet and his period before finally suggesting several detailed questions about the text itself. The Critical Evaluation portion of this entry addresses these questions and provides more detailed direction for students in regards to engaging a text like Byron's, before finally offering some reflections on methodological approaches and providing several proposals for further exercises and readings. In approaching literature and specifically poetry, this entry is focused on introducing students to three main approaches to this kind of source: materiality, or the physical properties of the text as an historical object; the method of close reading, a way of approaching a text by identifying key literary elements such as metaphor and illusion; and the marriage of context and hermeneutics, or the combination of the historical situation at the time the text was created and its personal and artistic resonance with readers today. Understood by some as essentially opposed approaches, I argue that by blending a contextual approach with a hermeneutic one, one can in fact not only bring students toward a richer historical understanding of a text but more than this toward a genuinely creative, scholarly engagement with a meaningful work of art.

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on August 15, 2022).

Publisher Number:

10.47594/RMPS_0099

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.