Byron and the poetics of adversity / Jerome McGann, University of Virginia.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McGann, Jerome J., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788-1824--Criticism and interpretation.

Byron, George Gordon Byron.

Poetics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 214 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Summary:

A long line of traditional, often conservative, criticism and cultural commentary deplored Byron as a slipshod poet. This pithy yet aptly poetic book, written by one of the world's foremost Romantic scholars, argues that assessment is badly mistaken. Byron's great subject is what he called 'Cant': the habit of abusing the world through misusing language. Setting up his poetry as a laboratory to investigate failures of writing, reading, and thinking, Byron delivered sharp critical judgment on the costs exacted by a careless approach to his Mother Tongue. Perspicuous readings of Byron alongside some of his Romantic contemporaries - Burns, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley - reveal Byron's startling reconfiguration of poetry as a 'broken mirror' and shattered lamp. The paradoxical result was to argue that his age's contradictions, and his own, offered both ethical opportunities and a promise of poetic - broadly cultural - emancipation. This book represents a major contribution to ideas about Romanticism.

Contents:

Cover

Reviews

Half-title page

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Epigraph

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Don Juan and the English Language

2 Byron Agonistes, 1809-1816

3 Manfred: One Word for Mercy

4 Byron and the "Wrong Revolutionary Poetical System"

5 Byron, Blake, and the Adversity of Poetics

6 The Stubborn Foe: Bad Verse and the Poetry of Action

Notes

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 29 Nov 2022).

ISBN:

9781009232975

1009232975

9781009232920

1009232924

9781009232968

1009232967