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Full Description
This book extends our understanding of Lord Byron's poetry--as opposed to his life and legend--by offering fifty very short discussions of his best poems, be they lyrics, four cantos of poetic travelogue in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, narrative poems set in the Middle East and elsewhere, dramas (neoclassical, Faustian, or Biblical), satires, love songs, or the seventeen cantos of his comic epic, Don Juan.
The coverage is wide, from the very beginning of Byron's career in Nottinghamshire to its very end in Greece, and the approach is accessible, giving readers something to think about rather than telling them what to think, without 'explaining poems away'. The focus is sometimes biographical, sometimes historical, sometimes generic, sometimes formalist, but always the texts are chosen on the basis of their quality, first and foremost. The book is designed to be dipped into, or read from cover to cover, as the reader prefers--and, of course, the choice of Byron's fifty best things will itself promote discussion of a poet who deserves to stand just behind Shakespeare alongside Chaucer, Milton, Pope, and Wordsworth as one of the central figures in English verse.
Contents
Introduction
Part One. Youth
1: 'On Leaving Newstead Abbey' [November 1803]
2: 'Fragment. Written Shortly After the Marriage of Miss Chaworth' [August 1805]
3: 'On a Distant View of the Village and School, of Harrow, on the Hill' [summer 1806]
4: 'Damaetas' [early 1807]
5: 'Oscar of Alva' [October 1807]
Part TWo. The Discovery of the Mediterranean
6: 'Lines to Mr Hodgson' [June 1809]
7: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: A Romaunt, Cantos I and II [October 1809-March 1810]
8: 'Song' ('Maid of Athens') [February 1810]
9: 'Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos' [May 1810]
10: The Curse of Minerva [March 1811]
Part Three. Fame and Infamy
11: 'An Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill' [March 1812]
12: 'Il Diavolo Inamorato' [April-May 1812]
13: The Giaour: A Fragment of a Turkish Tale [late 1812]
14: 'The Devil's Drive' [December 1813]
15: 'Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte' [April 1814]
16: Lara: A Tale [May-June 1814]
17: 'Harmodia' [September 1814]
18: 'The Harp the Monarch Minstrel Swept' [February 1815]
19: The Siege of Corinth: A Poem [January-October 1815]
20: 'Churchill's Grave, A Fact Literally Rendered' [June-July 1816]
Part Four. The Genevan Interlude
21: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto the Third [April-June 1816]
22: The Prisoner of Chillon: A Fable [June 1816]
23: 'The Dream' [July 1816]
24: 'Could I remount the river of my years' [July 1816]
25: 'Epistle to Augusta' [July 1816]
26: Manfred: A Dramatic Poem [August 1816-May 1817]
Part Five. Italy: A New Lease of Life
27: 'So, We'll Go No More A Roving' [February 1817]
28: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto the Fourth [June-July 1818]
29: 'Epistle from Mr Murray to Dr Polidori' [August 1817]
30: Beppo: A Venetian Story [October 1817]
31: Mazeppa: A Poem [April 1817-September 1818]
32: 'To the Po. June 2nd 1819'
33: Don Juan, Cantos I and II [July 1818-January 1819]
34: Don Juan, Cantos III and IV [September-November 1819]
35: Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice: An Historical Tragedy [April-July 1820]
36: Don Juan, Canto V [October-November 1820]
37: Sardanapalus, A Tragedy [January-May 1821]
38: The Two Foscari, An Historical Tragedy [June-July 1821]
39: Cain, A Mystery [July-September 1821]
40: The Vision of Judgment [September-October 1821]
41: Heaven and Earth, A Mystery [October 1821]
42: The Deformed Transformed; A Drama [January-February 1822]
43: Don Juan, Cantos VI and VIII [January-July 1822]
44: Don Juan, Cantos IX-XI [August-October 1822]
45: Don Juan, Cantos XII-XIV [November 1822-March 1823]
46: The Island [January-February 1823]
47: Don Juan, Cantos XV-XVII [March-May 1823]
Part Six. Greece: Deeper Earth
48: 'Journal in Cephalonia' [June 1823]
49: 'Aristomenes. Canto First' [10 September 1823]
50: 'Last Words on Greece' [March 1824?]
Afterword: The Poet Speaks
