Book contents
- Reviews
- Byron and the Poetics of Adversity
- Byron and the Poetics of Adversity
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Don Juan and the English Language
- 2 Byron Agonistes, 1809–1816
- 3 Manfred
- 4 Byron and the “Wrong Revolutionary Poetical System”
- 5 Byron, Blake, and the Adversity of Poetics
- 6 The Stubborn Foe
- Notes
- Index
3 - Manfred
One Word for Mercy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 November 2022
- Reviews
- Byron and the Poetics of Adversity
- Byron and the Poetics of Adversity
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Don Juan and the English Language
- 2 Byron Agonistes, 1809–1816
- 3 Manfred
- 4 Byron and the “Wrong Revolutionary Poetical System”
- 5 Byron, Blake, and the Adversity of Poetics
- 6 The Stubborn Foe
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Perhaps no work of Byron’s is more relentlessly challenging to a reader’s understanding than Manfred. The poem’s most notorious biographical resonance – the “real-world” identity of Astarte – indexes its striking array of provocative or enigmatic passages that force readers to a troubled sympathy with Manfred’s tormented mind and world. At the same time, the “medley style” of the work, mixing the poetics of dark Romanticism with unexpected satiric and farcical turns, initiated Byron’s breakthrough into poetic practices of unusual, even shocking, technical range and expressive virtuosity.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Byron and the Poetics of Adversity , pp. 82 - 102Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022