Byron and the Forms of Thought - Couverture rigide

Howe, Anthony

 
9781846319716: Byron and the Forms of Thought

Synopsis

Byron and the Forms of Thought is a major new study of Byron as a poet and thinker. While informed by recent work on Byron's philosophical contexts it sharply diverges from previous methodological assumptions to break new ground. Rather than attempting to re-describe Byron as a philosopher of a particular sort, the book draws attention to the ways in which Byron's poetry understands and explores its own 'philosophical' agency. To understand Byron's intellectual force, that is, we need to follow its trajectory in the direction of poetics. It follows from this, it is also argued, that Byron's intelligence is unavailable to modes of analysis that forego the close critical reading of poetic form. After an Introduction that explores the history of Byron's (mis)reading, the book falls into three parts. The first offers a new reading of Byron's scepticism, arguing that it does not lead to a philosophical conclusion but to a moment of possibility in which poetic writing is revalidated. Building upon this Part II confronts the problems of a Byronic poetics more directly and via two questions. First, how did Byron approach the problems encountered in the act of writing about poetry? This is done through a newly contextualized reading of Byron as a prose literary critic. Second, what happens if we think about Don Juan not as a work of counter-Romantic satire but as a new realization of visionary poetics? The conclusions reached are further tested in Part III with specific reference to Don Juan as both a narrative and a political poem.

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À propos de l?auteur

Dr Anthony Howe is Senior Lecturer in English at Birmingham City University. He is editor of the volume Liberty and Poetic Licence: New Essays on Byron (Liverpool University Press, 2008) and, with Professor Michael O'Neill, of The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013).

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