Byron and Marginality (Paperback - 2020)

Explores Byron as the figurehead of Romanticism and the writer of provocatively 'marginal' texts

This book approaches Byron from a completely new angle: no longer seen in terms of his status as a celebrity and a star on the book-selling market, Byron is instead seen as an outsider both in Regency society and, even more so, for his iconoclastic views of life and literature. Pilgrims in pursuit of non-existing shrines, women as man-eating giants and viragos, cannibalism, suicide, black humour and other provocatively border-crossing topics leave scholars hopelessly at a loss as to where they should categorise Byron and what they should do with his penchant for marginal themes, genres and characters. Byron caters to numerous Romantic clich s (weltschmerz, melancholy, subjectivity), while simultaneously reverting to genres, themes and motifs that cast him as a pre- or even anti-Romantic. This collection will trigger new debates in Byron scholarship and show that terms such as canonicity and marginality tend to be blurry and stand in constant need of re-negotiation.

Key Features:

• Re-reads Byron's heterogeneous texts
• Foregrounds Byron's marginal texts, the margins from which they were written and the thematic marginalities they deal with
• Re-evalutates Romanticism in the light of marginality
• Pinpoints the interface between Classicism, Romanticism and Modernity