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Byron’s and Shelley’s experimentation with the possibilities and pitfalls of poetic heroism unites their work. The Poet-Hero in the Work of Byron and Shelley traces the evolution of the poet-hero in the work of both poets, revealing that the struggle to find words adequate to the poet’s imaginative vision and historical circumstance is their central poetic achievement. Madeleine Callaghan explores the different types of poetic heroism that evolve in Byron’s and Shelley’s poetry and drama. Both poets experiment with, challenge and embrace a variety of poetic forms and genres, and this book discusses such generic exploration in the light of their developing versions of the poet-hero. The heroism of the poet, as an idea, an ideal and an illusion, undergoes many different incarnations and definitions as both poets shape distinctive and changing conceptions of the hero throughout their careers.
Callaghan has hit upon an interesting point of convergence between Byron and Shelley with her discussion of the poet-hero. She is a great reader of poetry, and I learned a lot from her analyses of specific stanzas and lines in both Byron’s and Shelley’s works. — Alexander Grammatikos, Langara College, Vancouver, BC, Canada, European Romantic Review (2021)
Acknowledgements; Note on Texts and Abbreviations; Introduction: The Poet- Hero: ‘Who shall trace the void?’; Part I Byron; Chapter One ‘A tyrant- spell’: The Byronic (Poet- )Hero in Manfred , Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Beppo; Chapter Two ‘Degraded to a Doge’: Inappropriate Poetic Heroism in Marino Faliero; Chapter Three ‘Thoughts unspeakable’: Poetic Heroism under Pressure in Cain and The Deformed Transformed; Chapter Four Poetic Heroism and Authority: Don Juan and ‘Epistle to Augusta’; Interchapter: Chapter Five ‘As we wish our souls to be’: Julian and Maddalo and The Island; Part II Shelley; Chapter Six ‘The Highest Idealism of Passion and of Power’: Shelley’s Heroic Poetics in A Defence of Poetry, The Mask of Anarchy and Prometheus Unbound; Chapter Seven ‘Holy and Heroic Verse’: The Revolutionary Poet- Heroes of Laon and Cythna; Chapter Eight ‘This soul out of my soul’: The Trial of the Poet- Hero in Shelley’s Epipsychidion; Chapter Nine ‘His mute voice’: The Two Heroes of Adonais; Conclusion; The Byronic and the Shelleyan Poet- Hero; Bibliography; Index.