When, in his last decade, Poet Laureate Robert Southey collected and edited his Poetical Works, he was willing to include in chronological sequence his sharply political playlet Wat Tyler, written in his republican youth in 1794, twenty years before a Tory conversion earned him his office at court, then published by his enemies in 1817 to embarrass him. But he set A Vision of Judgement, his epic ode on the occasion of George III's death, published April 1821, out of chronology, in the last of his ten volumes. Maybe he meant to give it capstone honours (as Wordsworth liked to use his Great Ode in his volumes). Or maybe he hoped to bury his praises, for the fame of his Vision proved not to be its beatification of King George, but its accidental inspiration for one of the most concise and hilarious satires in English letters, Byron's The Vision of Judgment. Despite the obvious political satire and literary parody, this visionary yoking is less heterogeneous than it might first seem, for Byron's high-spirited mockery contains within it an awareness of his own complicity in self-serving poetic performances. Southey is one of an array of authors, some embraced, some displaced, some disgraced. These involve the poet's pseudonymous visionary 'I'; St Peter; the diabolic chronicler of the monarchy, 'Sathan' (Byron thus distinguishes his adversary from Southey's); the hapless Laureate; and, most critically, the mysterious author-function 'Junius', a shadow that not only shames Southey but falls across Byron as well.

Anyone who decides to look at the question of Flaubert's attitude to the theatre is likely to have at least two surprises. The first is to do with his childhood. Every reader of a biography of Flaubert is aware that, with his sister and some school friends, he had used his father's billiard-room to put on plays, but it is less well known that this was close to being an obsession. Flaubert wrote plays, he acted in them, he organised performances with costumes, playbills and tickets. Here is how at the age of seventeen he remembered this period of his young life:

Byron's lyric writing needs to be understood in the context of Romantic lyricism in general. This move is particularly important in Byron's case because his writing develops a Romantic 'style' as distinctive and as influential as Wordsworth's, although historical circumstances have obscured this situation. With certain few exceptions, for example, nineteenth-century British poets followed a Wordsworthian line while Europeans were taking their lead from Byron. Not until the legacy of Baudelaire permeated the twentieth century would an access to Byron's lyric procedures open up for poets writing in English.

Romanticism is regularly and usefully characterized in terms lifted from a certain set of adjectives, such as: subjective, impassioned, personal, sincere, spontaneous, reflective, self-conscious. The terms point toward a body of work that, however diverse in other respects, shares the common feature signalled by those various descriptors. Here are several famous Romantic passages, more or less randomly chosen:

If Madame Bovary was brought to trial on account of its perceived indecencies to public and religious morality, particularly on account of the famous, frenetic cab ride around Rouen and the 'sacrilegious' wake at her bedside, the novel's nineteenth-century censors did not detail Emma Bovary's death pangs among their principal objections. Whether considered a 'fitting' punishment for her adulteries or a sacrifice on the altar of Romantic excess or the orders of Patriarchy, her death remains the unquestioned crux of the novel. As the site of its moral, it also highlights Flaubert's implied ethics of art, to show rather than tell. Indeed, Emma's cruelly detailed agony and almost sadistically protracted death have continued to provide grist to Flaubert criticism. Her final death throes have thus stimulated approaches as diverse as sociocritical, psychoanalytic and feminist, and it is this scene too that has fascinated critics who uphold Flaubert the Realist. Frequently cited are the medical accuracy and meticulous ordering of the various stages of death by arsenic poisoning that Emma endures, an attention to medical detail as precise as that of the almost equally famous club-foot operation at the pivotal point in the novel. Conversely, and with equal conviction, critics arguing for the symbolic or mythic import of Flaubert's Madame Bovary will cite the appearance of the blind beggar in her final moments, the significance of Emma's triple coffin, or the decidedly ironic or gnomic ending of this Flaubert novel as indicative of his later novels and short stories. Little critical attention has been paid, however, to the no less problematic and seemingly non-violent deaths that accompany the more visible, violent and hideously graphic ones in Flaubert's works, not least in Madame Bovary.

Of what does a fictional character consist? What choices does Flaubert make in devising his imaginary beings? And how do his styles in character creation compare with those of other authors? Flaubert's two greatest achievements are the creation of richly varied dramatic characters and the depiction of ludicrous grotesques. The inner life of the former transcends simple dichotomies: their psychopathology generates delusional projections that blur the boundaries between fantasy and reality; their vague wishes and abortive projects problematise the relationships between thought and action; their dysfunctionality is florid. The inherent mediocrity of the grotesques, displayed as they blindly conform to, unthinkingly cite, or skilfully manipulate cultural clichés, provides the major vehicle of satire. At times, as with Emma Bovary, these two character types overlap.

Though primarily an opera composer, Verdi also wrote a number of works in other genres. Only one of these, the Messa da Requiem, has assumed a significant place in the repertory. The remaining solo songs, instrumental music, and choral works, more-or-less ignored and virtually forgotten, are infrequently performed and have not been broadly discussed in print. Consequently, this chapter will provide an overview of their history, style, and sources.

Beginning as a young boy in Busseto, Verdi composed a variety of non-operatic works, both sacred and secular. In mid-career he attested to the diversity of his youthful compositional activities:

For generations of readers, the experience of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage has been caught up with a reading of Byron's psychology, for the poem has commonly been seen as the expression of an incompletely repressed alter ego to be read in parallel with Byron's own life and expressed opinions. It therefore finds itself firmly placed within the bounds of an interpretative frame whose constant reference point is the concept of a flawed and melancholic psyche. Within this, approving critics may note the perspicuity of the poem's dark opinions, or the fascination of its psychology, while disapproving critics might censure the indulgence of high Romantic self-expression or dramatisation. These approaches, and their approving or disapproving reflexes are not misreadings. In many ways, they constitute a meta-narrative which is historically continuous, amply echoing the response of Byron's contemporary audience, which enjoyed the poem precisely because it seemingly alluded to the authentic experience of its author. But in general, such a view is likely to eclipse other of the poem's achievements, for it tends to reinforce the Romantic cult of introversion wherein the isolation of the private poet is seen as a necessary condition of a gifted perception. I will argue here for an understanding of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage i and ii as a profoundly public work written in a style designed to appeal to a new audience sympathetic to its coherent and anti-teleological explorations of history, politics and contemporary affairs. It is an ambitious poem which constructs a world-view for the modern - that is to say 'Romantic' - post-revolutionary intellectual, a view which in turn produces the psychology of the Byronic hero as a dramatisation of its effects. Significantly, its perspective is European, discarding orthodox or nationalistic understandings of history and empire, in favour of an all-embracing scepticism, which interrogates ideals of civilisation's progress and nationhood through a series of meditations around posterity's judgements on heroism, fame and achievement.

Whereas Childe Harold ii and ii sought the goal of their pilgrimage in the classical world of Greece, at the boundary of civilization and Nature, and Canto iii seeks its elusive goal in Nature beyond civilization, Canto iV concentrates on the high civilization of the Renaissance and of Rome. While obviously to some extent dictated by Byron's own whereabouts, the move also expresses a very significant shift in his world view. In Manfred (pp. 118) we have seen how the individual becomes responsible for the meaning of his or her own life. This is a secular view of meaning, seeing life as a construct of man's own mental activity. This mental activity is represented in and by civilization and culture. Life made meaningful has the form of an artwork - it is a product of civilization and culture. This is the view that dominates Canto iV. The canto opens with the famous image of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice:

Byron's considerable body of dramatic poetry poses special challenges for literary criticism, and studies of Byron have often had little to say about the plays as plays. In part, this neglect reflects a larger failure to bring the verse drama of the Romantic poets comfortably within the standard categories of literary history. All of the canonical Romantics - Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats - wrote at least one verse play, but until the last dozen years or so these have tended to be dismissed as misguided attempts at 'closet drama': plays meant to be read but not performed. The counterimpulse to read at least some works of Romantic verse drama as 'mental theatre' (Byron's term) - innovative and iconoclastic poetic forms rather than stage plays manqués - can work well enough for a 'dramatic poem' like Manfred or an intellectual drama like Cain. It tends, though, to lose sight of the productive tension between the dramatic works of the Romantic poets and the lively and politically fraught theatrical culture of their time. Byron not only produced a larger and more varied canon of verse drama - eight works, if one counts Manfred and the fragmentary Deformed Transformed - than any of the other canonical poets, but he also stands out as the only one with extensive, practical experience of the stage. This overview of Byron's poetic drama, then, opens with a look at his relation to the contemporary theatre.

Set at the court of the Duke of Mantua in the sixteenth century, Rigoletto is the story of a jester whose situation is anything but funny. Ugly, with a hunched back, he is pitilessly derided by the courtiers. In his whole life he has known only one brief period of happiness, when – well before the time of the opera – a woman took pity on him, became his wife, and gave him a daughter. Now a widower, his only solace is that daughter, Gilda, whom he protects obsessively, hoping above all that the Duke (a notorious seducer) will not find her. Unfortunately this is precisely what happens: as the curtain rises, the Duke is preparing to make his move. Gilda is aware of her suitor (although not of his identity) but says nothing to her father. In Act I she enjoys her first few moments together with the Duke before being abducted by a group of courtiers intent on playing a trick on Rigoletto – they think Gilda is his mistress. Momentarily thwarted, the Duke is soon back on top of things: the courtiers can’t wait to tell him about their exploits, and about the woman they are keeping prisoner in the palace. Exit the Duke to an adjoining room, to do what he does best. Rigoletto then arrives to quiz the courtiers, soon realizing that what he fears most is happening at that very moment. When Gilda comes back in to confess that she is no longer the emblem of unworldly purity he thought, he swears revenge on the Duke.

If historians have generally regarded Thomas Cranmer as the most complex character among the churchmen of the sixteenth-century Reformation in England, his theological legacy, particularly when finely tuned, is none too difficult to determine. For, somewhat akin to Beethoven’s masterly Eroica symphony, there is a heroic quality about the life and work of the diligent scholar Henry VIII chose to be archbishop of Canterbury. Modern scholarship may spurn such a judgement, no doubt deeming it 'old hat', simpliste, even partisan and divisive. Nevertheless, there remains an extraordinary dimension to the martyred Tudor primate.

It is tempting to take the parallel further and embrace all four movements of the Eroica. Just as Beethoven opened up a new symphonic scene, Cranmer’s involvement with Henry and Cromwell in their spirited break with Rome over the king’s ‘divorce’ surely provided a dramatic start (allegro con brio) to a Cambridge don’s career at the Tudor court. With the mass as the focal point and purpose of priestly ministry, any second stage of development in the direction of church reform also demanded slow, even dignified (larghetto!) consideration, particularly when the royal creed continued to cleave to Catholicism (papal recognition only excepted). And although it would be inappropriate to liken work on the Book of Common Prayer that followed to the light, playful passage of the scherzo, the Protestant convictions of a young and eager Edward VI at least gave Cranmer new freedom to experiment. As for the finale, what could be more frustrating than the quickening pace (allegro molto) of court faction, of the accession of Mary the Catholic, Roman renewal, and Protestant pastoral vision unfulfilled?

John Calvin (1509-64) spent most of his adult life as a refugee from his native France. By far his longest exile was in Geneva, a city in which - in spite of his undoubted prominence - he seemed never to feel completely at home. Many of the figures who assisted Calvin in the reform of Geneva - energetic men such as Guillaume Farel and Pierre Viret - were forgotten by time, their books left largely unread after their deaths except by a handful of scholars. But Calvin’s theological influence did not cease with his death in 1564. If anything, it grew stronger, especially in the English-speaking world. Thomas Norton’s translation of Calvin’s Institutes went through eleven editions by 1632. Calvin’s catechism went through eighteen editions in English by 1628. Arthur Golding translated Calvin’s sermons on Job, which went through five editions between 1574 and 1584. In America, the Calvinism of the low-church Anglicans of Virginia, the Congregationalists of Massachusetts, the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of North Carolina, and the Baptists of Rhode Island was reinforced by the Dutch Calvinism of New Jersey and New York and by the German Calvinism of Pennsylvania. Even John Wesley, the founder of the Methodists, a notably anti-Calvinist movement on the American frontier, once confessed that his theology came within a 'hair's-breadth of Calvinism'.

Byron made a number of statements about prose as a medium of expression, and almost always in its relation to poetry. On 17 November 1813, he confided to his journal: 'I began a comedy and burnt it because the scene ran into reality; - a novel, for the same reason. In rhyme, I can keep more away from facts; but the thought always runs through, through . . . yes, yes, through' (BLJ , iii, 209); six days later he added: 'I have burnt my Roman - as I did the first scenes and sketch of my comedy . . . I ran into realities more than ever; and some would have been recognized and others guessed at' (BLJ , iii, 217). In Beppo on the other hand, he announces: 'I've half a mind to tumble down to prose, / But verse is more in fashion - so here goes!'; and in Don Juan: 'if ever I should condescend to prose, / I'll write poetical commandments' (Beppo, 52, and Don Juan , i, 204). Fashion? Inferiority? An unsatisfactory means of achieving and sustaining creative objectivity? As diverse as these reflections are, one thing they seem to tell us is that, unlike Wordsworth, Byron does perceive an 'essential difference' between poetry and prose, though not necessarily - and here he might agree with Wordsworth - between 'the language of prose and metrical composition'; a difference in kind, in creative discipline. I should like to take these as signposts and to begin with a few remarks about his prose in general before focusing a little more specifically on 'To the Editor of the British Review' (1819) and Some Observations upon an Article in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (1820) (hereinafter referred to as 'To the Editor' and Some Observations respectively). The effort as a whole will attempt to suggest some answers to the questions: What is Byron's Prose, what characterizes it, what sort of subjects does it cover, how well does it work as a creative medium?

Writing to Louis de Cormenin in June of 1844, the twenty-two-year-old Flaubert sketches an ideal society of 'good lads, all men of letters, living together and gathering two or three times a week to eat a good meal washed down with a good wine, while savouring some succulent poet' ['bons garçons, tous gens d'art, vivant ensemble et se réunissant deux ou trois fois par semaine pour manger un bon morceau arrosé d'un bon vin, tout en dégustant quelque succulent poète' (Cor. i 209)]. Friendship, the pleasures of the table, the delights of conversation, above all talk devoted to literature: these are all central to Flaubert's personality, all the more important for someone who chose to lead an existence that was primarily solitary. These are also the motifs that run through his correspondence like brightly coloured threads, even when the general fabric grows dark with the pessimism of his later years.

For Flaubert, the nineteenth century was 'l'Hénaurme siècle'. This distortion of the epithet énorme admirably conveys not only his ironical attitude towards the misplaced self-confidence and pretension of the age, but also his frank enjoyment of the grotesque figures who, for him, embodied these quintessentially bourgeois characteristics. As the novelist Milan Kundera would later put it, with only minimal recourse to hyperbole: 'Flaubert discovered stupidity. I dare say that is the greatest discovery of a century so proud of its scientific thought.' In Flaubert's eyes, bêtise ['stupidity'] contaminated even the highest reaches of intellectual endeavour. Writing to George Sand after reading Lamennais's Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion, he boasted: 'I am now thoroughly acquainted with all those monumental jokers who have had such a calamitous influence on the nineteenth century' ['Je connais maintenant, et ê fond, tous ces immenses farceurs, qui ont eu sur le 19e siècle une influence désastreuse' (Cor. iv 758)].