Lord Byron's Strength: Romantic Writing and Commercial Society

By Jerome Christensen and Professor Jerome Christensen

Book Overview

"Contains some of the most striking and sophisticated essays on Byron written in the last two decades... Performs a welcome intervention in the critical literature on Byron and points towards a future direction for Byron studies."-- Albion. "An important book... Christensen's grasp on the historical material is impressive, and his explications of poetic passages are persuasive."-- Nineteenth Century Studies. According to Jerome Christensen, literary histories of British Romanticism have dealt inadequately with Byron's "lordship"--his singularity as a phenomenal literary success and as the last and greatest aristocratic poet in the language. At first, Byron does not want a poetic career. Then, entrapped by his extraordinary success, he gets one. And once Byron has a career, he ruins it--not by his unsavory sexual practices and political grandstanding, but by publishing his greatest poem. The first extended study of the career and persona of the most celebrated poet of the nineteenth century, Lord Byron's Strength draws on contemporary literary, political, and social theory not only to revise our understanding of Byron but also to reexamine the romanticism of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Scott, Hazlitt, and Shelley.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801843553
• ISBN13: 9780801843556
• Release Date: November 1992
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 456 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 1.3" x 6.5"