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Byron concealed himself in various literary disguises, a process he called “mobility.” In this study of influences on Byron’s verse and Byron’s European impact, I explore these borrowings and transformations as they manifested themselves in his reading. At issue is the very concept of romantic poetic voice. Framing himself in the tradition of the Irish yet cosmopolitan Thomas Moore, Byron adopted continental guises, imitating both Italian writers and political heroes, such as Dante, Machiavelli, and Tasso. In establishing an Italian identity, Byron relied upon the Italian writers he translated (Pulci, Dante), Thomas Moore’s “Fudge Family in Paris,” and Shelley’s “Julian and Maddalo,” as well as Goethe’s Faust. This Europeanization of Byron should not conceal the fact that Byron adopted poses from his predecessors, such as Walter Scott, in order to fashion himself as a Scottish poet who also happened to be English. Byron became the writers he read: Moore, Shelley, Wordsworth, Scott, Foscolo, Lady Morgan, and Madame de Staël. Those who imitated Byron, particularly Alexander Pushkin and Adam Mickiewicz, became the best interpreters of his literary example while transforming it, and explained what it meant to be a Harold in Muscovite Cloak, or a Polish Byron, to be both delimited and emancipated by Byron’s example.
“This book is a significant gift to Byron and Byron Studies: a reading of the estranged Byron drawn from tormented and estranged Europe. Expelled from imperial England, he was their stranger and they took him in.” — Jerome McGann, Emeritus Professor, the University of Virginia
“European Byron reveals a capacious trans-European Byron, linking Byron to the cosmopolitan Shelley and Foscolo and, strikingly, tracing his impact on writers from Eastern Europe, particularly Pushkin and Mickiewicz. Grounded in textual details such as marginalia, the book explores Byron through field-defining approaches, including queer aesthetics, food studies, and eco-criticism.” — Jeffrey N. Cox, the University of Colorado Distinguished Professor, Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Distinction in English and Humanities, the University of Colorado Boulder
“Jonathan Gross’s excellent close readings add substantially to our biographical, textual, and cultural understanding of Byron. They illuminate the depth of Byron’s influence on Eastern European writers and the influence on him of local writers Beckford, Walpole, and Moore, how prominently camp fig-ures into his works, and how its resistance to translation make European Byron distinct from English Byron.” — Joseph Viscomi, James G. Kenan Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Litera-ture, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Figures; Frequently Cited Works; Acknowledgments; Introduction: Camp Strategies in Walpole, Beckford, Byron, and Damer: The Example of Manfred; Part I: Imitation, Madness, Improvisation; One; Part II: Orphic Music and Moral Self-Discipline; “Fare thee Well!”: Polish and Russian RESPONSES TO BYRONISM; Conclusion: Freemasonry in Manfred—Byron, Mickiewicz, and Pushkin; Bibliography; Index