History is a major point of inquiry and exploration in all Byron's major, and many of his minor, works. Byron understands and conceptualizes history and its tight and troubled relationship with literature, drawing attention to the literariness of history and the historicity of literature in his wake. The aspiration to the 'truth' of history is, for Byron, a highly creative process, highlighting the cross-pollination of fact and fiction, and also exploring history's inherent theatricality. Historical writing shapes but, crucially, also distorts our understanding of history. The dramatic works of Lord Byron are, on the whole, traditionally the least critically explored territory of his oeuvre. Byron's singular understanding and conceptualization of history in his dramas is the focus of this study, comprising the seven dramatic works he wrote between 1820 and 1822. As this thesis shows, these dramas make up a dynamic dramatic project, creating a space of formal, discursive and thematic experimentation, which reveals not only Byron's intense involvement in matters of drama but also, in a wider perspective, his understanding and treatment of history. This study takes up Byron's treatment of history in his dramas and analyses it through the methodology of play laid out and adapted for use in literary...

Byron's reception in one of the nineteenth century's largest and most culturally significant post-colonial outposts, Brazil, has been virtually ignored in English studies. The implications of Lord Byron's influence in Brazil are extensive since he was overwhelmingly popular among poets but also subversive to the nationalistic aims of Brazilian Romanticism. Nearly all of the well known Brazilian Romantics were not only influenced by him, but translated him. Their notion of what it meant to be "Byronic," however, differed from ideas held in Europe. The Brazilian Byronic hero was more extreme, macabre, and sentimental, lonelier, darker, and deadlier. Byron had various cult followings in Brazil that established rites and ceremonies and performed Manfred-like rituals. Brazilian Romantic culture had such a marked effect on translations of Byron's work and perceptions of the poet that it provides an exciting context for considering the interplay of social energies between text, author, and culture. This thesis has two primary aims. First, it follows the evolution of Byron's influence in Brazil: starting with its European beginnings, tracing the arrival of Byron's image in Brazil, exploring the explosion of his influence evidenced in Brazilian literature, and considering the cultural obsession that reproduced his image ritualistically in the lives of Brazilian Romantics. Second, the chapters loosely map out several aspects of his celebrity image, or several ways of viewing Byron, including Byron as the rogue debauchee; Byron as the cosmopolitan; Byron as the eccentric, disillusioned poet; and Byron as the satanic Romantic. For Brazil, and much of Europe too, Lord Byron was the embodiment of Romanticism. The way Brazilian Romantics saw Byron, therefore, reflected what they thought English Romanticism to be. Especially in a contemporary critical climate that continues to respond to Jerome McGann's The Romantic Ideology, a Brazilian notion of English Romanticism, which turns out to be so polar to the contemporary English idea of its own just-past Romantic era, further disrupts the idea of stable periodization and a universally codified Romantic movement.

Lord Byron was very much concerned with the problems of immortality and fame. Perhaps his greatest single theme in poetry is human greatness. An especial aspect of human greatness, namely of heroes in spirit and in action, is, of course, one of the most permanent and best known features of Byron's poetry, the creation of the Byronic hero" being one of the poet's most outstanding contribu- tions to world literature. This study is concerned with all of the heroes Lord Byron created. It is to be a study of their origin, development, and meaning in the poetry of Byron. Lord Byron published his first poetry, Hours of Idleness, which included some thirty-nine poems of varying length and quality, mostly written in the style of Alexander Pope and many of them employing the heroic couplet, in 1807. Byron was nineteen.

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the duel of honor functioned as a formal recourse to attacks on a gentleman's reputation. Concurrently, many notable literary figures such as Samuel Johnson, William Gifford, Thomas Moore, and Lord Byron were involved in literary disputes featuring duels or the threat of physical violence, a pattern indicating a connection between authorship and dueling. This study explicitly examines this connection, particularly as it relates to social acceptance, the gentrification of authorship, and the business of publishing. The act of publishing, putting one's work into the public sphere for consumption as well as critique, created an acute sensitivity to issues of honor because publishing automatically broadcast insults or accusations of dishonorable conduct to the reading public. This study requires a grounded discussion of complex, interconnected concepts, specifically: masculine identity, social hierarchy, and violence; satire; dueling; and authorship. Discussion moves from a foundational concern with violence and the assertion of social status, to the relationship between status and honor, to specific modes of defending honor, and finally to the attempt to establish authorship as an honorable profession. Although each of these quarrels exhibits physical violence or the threat of physical violence, these examples also exhibit verbal violence through satiric assaults or an exchange of verbal attacks and parries. As professional writers struggled to overcome the stereotype of the literary hack and gain social respectability, dueling, with either lead or paper bullets, became a way for authors to defend and maintain the fragile social status they had gained. / Master of Arts

Firstly in digression Byron presents a national reality which gradually displaces his cherished cosmopolitan ideals. Among many other pressing problems of his day, political renegades, the paradox of scientific innovations, the rise of intellectual ladies and the commoditization of marriage and family constitute the tangible part of Byron's domestic recalling. With retrospective commentaries Byron fulfills the act of imagining native land; and in this regard nationalism is the spiritual support of the expatriate existence. / I propose to comprehend the perceptive gap by focusing on Don Juan which best contextualizes Byron in the flow of historicity with the dimension of nationalism. I intend to delve into three structural units of Don Juan---digression, narrative, a lyric song---to argue that Byronic contradictions manifest nationalism in its multiple contingencies. / In conclusion Don Juan reveals that Byron's participation in the modern historicity of nationalism involves three dimensions---residual cosmopolitan ideals, English national consciousness and the independence of the oppressed nations. Don Juan embodies a historical magnetic field where Byron's existence actualizes the potential conflict of the modernity. / Secondly by reading Don Juan as the quest romance of the individual initiation, I bring the narrative into scrutiny and argue that the hero's transformation involves an implicit evolution of the national identification. In terms of subjective consciousness, nationalism embodies the mature vision of masculine selfhood. Don Juan's encounter with both female and male characters, through his repeated border-crossing, illuminates a metaphorical process from rejection to embrace of native roots, from negation to affirmation of national bonds Juan's rite of passage---sexual initiation, surviving shipwreck, the trial of the exotic love and battlefield and diplomacy---transmits a national subjectivity which corresponds to the Byronic existence of mobility. / The dissertation explores the discrepancy between critical reception towards Byron as a Romantic poet in contemporary Romantic scholarship and in Chinese historical evaluation (with certain reference to the European Continent). Byronic contradictions pose a problem to Romantic scholars who are engaged to interpret the interplay between Byron the man and Byron the poet. They share the view that Byron succeeds in manipulating his own personal image to promote his poetical visibility and tend to doubt if his poems could stand alone without the reference to his letters and journals. In China, as in many other countries of European Continent and Asia, Byron is often viewed in a more positive way as the very name has become a byword for liberal nationalism and the rebellion against tyranny / Thirdly 'Isles of Greece' adds an alternative yet prospective dimension to perceive the tension between national anxiety and modernity. In English context its meanings vary as the contextual focus shifts from poetical to socio-biographical and to existential level. The theme of the national independence is complicated by its negative elements such as the identity of the songster. In the Chinese context, 'the Isles of Greece' initiates and embodies a myth-making process as it gives vent to the anxiety of modernity faced by Chinese people in the opening of the twentieth century. The individual shaping of the 'Isles' by three Chinese intellectual pioneers symbolizes the simultaneous awakening of Chinese national consciousness and individual consciousness. The extended reading of Byron by Lu Xun, together with his reworking, voices the existential dilemma of modern enlighteners. His invocation of 'Mara poets' is prophetic of the modern intellectuals who possess both vision and willpower to eradicate ignorance and public apathy. / Gu, Yao. / Adviser: Ching Yuet May. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 72-01, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-173). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-230). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1992. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 236-258).

L’Albanie est demeurée longtemps l’un des pays européens les plus méconnus. Ce pays qui depuis la fin du XVe siècle était resté pendant presque cinq cents ans sous la domination ottomane était un mystérieux avant-poste de l’Islam au cœur de l’Europe. Ce fut seulement au tout début des années 1800 qu’on commença à l’inclure parmi les destinations du « Grand Tour ». Cette recherche a visé à dégager les typologies de la représentation par lesquelles les écrivains et les artistes européens donnèrent les « images » par lesquelles l’Albanie fut conçue par les étrangers. Les sources abordées vont du début du XIXe siècle aux années 1940. À partir d’un corpus primaire comprenant les Souvenirs de la Haute-Albanie du consul français Alexandre Degrand, L’Albania de l’écrivain-journaliste italien Ugo Ojetti, et High Albania de l’Anglaise Mary Edith Durham, le champ d’observation s’est élargi à inclure un large éventail de textes allant des journaux de voyage aux œuvres fictionnelles aux articles de presse. Une attention particulière a été portée au côté proprement figuratif des œuvres littéraires, consistant en des gravures, des croquis et d’autres formes de la visualisation ; leur observation a constitué un outil complémentaire aux fins de l’identification du réseau historico-conceptuel où prit forme l’image de l’Albanie. Enfin, une étude à part entière a été consacrée à des ouvrages se déroulant dans de pays fictionnels inspirés de l’Albanie ; rédigés entre la fin du XIXe et nos jours, ils montrent une concentration de clichés et de stéréotypes, constituant ainsi un test réactif pour détecter certaines des sources de l’image de l’Albanie dans le courant dominant contemporain. / Albania has long been one of the less known European countries. This country which had remained for nearly five hundred years under Ottoman rule was a mysterious outpost of Islam in the heart of Europe. It was only in the early 1800s which it began to be considered worthwhile to include among the Grand Tour destinations. This research has been aimed at detecting and identifying representation patterns through which writers and European artists shaped the « images » by which Albania was conceived by foreigners. The sources range from early XIXth to the 1940s. Starting from a primary corpus consisting of Souvenirs de la Haute-Albanie by the French consul Alexandre Degrand, L’Albania by the Italian writer Ugo Ojetti, and High Albania by the English Mary Edith Durham, our observation field widened to include a broader survey of works ranging from travel diaries and fictional novels to newspaper articles. A prominent place belongs to the iconological corpus, namely to the engravings, sketches and other representational forms through which European literature illustrated Albanian subjects. Observing them has been a complementary tool for identifying the historical and conceptual framework in which the image of Albania took shape. Finally, a specific study has been devoted to works taking place in fictional countries inspired by Albania. Written from the late XIXth century to the present day, they show a rather high concentration of clichés and stereotypes scattered throughout European literature, thus acting as a reactive test to detect some of the sources of the current image of Albania. / Pur essendo nel cuore del Mediterraneo, l’Albania è stata a lungo uno dei Paesi europei meno conosciuti. Agli occhi del resto d’Europa, questo Paese rimasto per quasi 500 anni sotto la dominazione ottomana rappresentava un misterioso avamposto dell’Islam di fronte alle coste italiane; fu soltanto agli inizi del 1800 che cominciò a essere considerato una meta da inserire fra le tappe del Grand Tour.Questa ricerca ha mirato a identificare i modelli di rappresentazione attraverso cui viaggiatori, scrittori e artisti europei hanno visto l’Albania, le sue tradizioni e il suo popolo, dando così origine a quelle che sarebbero diventate le sue «immagini» nella percezione collettiva. Le fonti vanno dai primi del XIX secolo, quando il Paese entrò nel pantheon della letteratura internazionale grazie al "Childe Harold" di Lord Byron, al 1940.Il corpus originario, costituito dai "Souvenirs de la Haute-Albanie" del console francese Alexandre Degrand, da "L’Albania" dello scrittore-giornalista italiano Ugo Ojetti, e da "High Albania" dell’inglese Mary Edith Durham, cui è stata dedicata un’attenzione particolare per la sua complessa e innovativa opera etno-antropologica, si è ampliato fino a comprendere un campo d’indagine che va dai diari di viaggio ai resoconti diplomatici, dalla narrativa alla stampa periodica.Inoltre, nella convinzione che nella creazione dell’immagine dell’Altro un posto rilevante spetta alla rappresentazione visuale in se stessa, è stata dedicata particolare attenzione al campo figurativo, consistente in dipinti, schizzi e altre forme della visualizzazione attraverso cui l’arte e la letteratura europea hanno rappresentato temi e motivi albanesi. La loro osservazione ha fornito ulteriori strumenti di analisi del quadro storico e concettuale in cui ha preso forma l’immagine dell’Albania. Infine, uno studio specifico è stato dedicato a una tipologia di rappresentazione alquanto particolare, fatta di testi narrativi ambientati in paesi immaginari ispirati all’Albania. Scritti tra la fine del XIX secolo e i giorni nostri, essi offrono un’elevata concentrazione di cliché e stereotipi sparsi nella letteratura di viaggio, fornendo un repertorio utile a individuare alcune delle fonti dei più diffusi modelli di rappresentazione dell’Albania.

The purpose of this study is to suggest the influence of certain characters in eighteen works by English Renaissance authors upon the Byronic Hero, that composite figure which emerges from Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the Oriental Tales, the dramas, and some of the shorter poems.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Literatura mención Literatura General y Comparada