The Poet-Hero in the Work of Byron and Shelley , livre ebook

The Poet-Hero in the Work of Byron and Shelley
Anthem Nineteenth-Century Series
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Kirstie Blair – University of Stirling, UK
Archie Burnett – Boston University, USA
Christopher Decker – University of Nevada, USA
Heather Glen – University of Cambridge, UK
Linda K. Hughes – Texas Christian University, USA
Simon J. James – Durham University, UK
Angela Leighton – University of Cambridge, UK
Jo McDonagh – King’s College London, UK
Michael O’Neill – Durham University, UK
Seamus Perry – University of Oxford, UK
Clare Pettitt – King’s College London, UK
Adrian Poole – University of Cambridge, UK
Jan-Melissa Schramm – University of Cambridge, UK
The Poet-Hero in the Work of Byron and Shelley
Madeleine Callaghan
Anthem Press
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Copyright © Madeleine Callaghan 2019
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing -in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-897-3 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-897-4 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
For Michael O’Neill (1953–2018)
Art and eloquence,
And all the shows o’ the world are frail and vain
To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Note on Texts and Abbreviations
Introduction
The Poet-Hero: ‘Who shall trace the void?’
Part I Byron

Chapter One
‘A tyrant-spell’: The Byronic (Poet-)Hero in Manfred , Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Beppo
Chapter Two
‘Degraded to a Doge’: Inappropriate Poetic Heroism in Marino Faliero
Chapter Three
‘Thoughts unspeakable’: Poetic Heroism under Pressure in Cain and The Deformed Transformed
Chapter Four
Poetic Heroism and Authority: Don Juan and ‘Epistle to Augusta’
Interchapter

Chapter Five
‘As we wish our souls to be’: Julian and Maddalo and The Island
Part II Shelley

Chapter Six
‘The Highest Idealism of Passion and of Power’: Shelley’s Heroic Poetics in A Defence of Poetry , The Mask of Anarchy and Prometheus Unbound
Chapter Seven
‘Holy and Heroic Verse’: The Revolutionary Poet-Heroes of Laon and Cythna
Chapter Eight
‘This soul out of my soul’: The Trial of the Poet-Hero in Shelley’s Epipsychidion
Chapter Nine
‘His mute voice’: The Two Heroes of Adonais
Conclusion
The Byronic and the Shelleyan Poet-Hero
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am very grateful to a number of people for their encouragement, help and stimulating conversations, especially Joe Bray, Fabienne Collignon, Stuart Curran, Amanda Davis, Katherine Ebury, Jonathan Ellis, Gavin Hopps, Anthony Howe, Ágnes Lehóczky, Mariyah Mandhu, Chris Murray, Ellen Nicholls, Paul O’Neill, Seamus Perry, Adam Piette, Amber Regis, Nicholas Roe, Mark Sandy, Ranjan Sen, Jane Stabler, Emma Suret, Philip Swanson, Paige Tovey Jones, Sue Vice, Daniel Westwood, Sarah Wootton and Angela Wright. I am grateful to my colleagues and the University of Sheffield for their support of my research. Thanks also to Anthem Press.
For permission to reprint published material in this book I am grateful to the following relevant editors and publishers: Keats-Shelley Review 24 and Byron Journal 38.2. I’d like to thank both my father and my brother, Martin and Richard Callaghan, for their interest in my work; Stuart Green for his love and understanding; and, finally, the late Michael O’Neill for reading and commenting on every word of this book, and for being such a witty, generous and brilliant poet, critic and friend. You are much missed.
NOTE ON TEXTS AND ABBREVIATIONS
Lord George Gordon Byron, Byron’s Letters and Journals , ed. Leslie A. Marchand, 13 vols (London: Murray, 1973–94). Hereafter BLJ .
All quotations from Byron’s letters will be taken from this edition.
Lord Byron: The Complete Miscellaneous Prose , ed. Andrew Nicholson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). Hereafter Byron’s Prose .
All quotations from Byron’s prose will be taken from this edition.
Lord George Gordon Byron, The Complete Poetical Works , ed. Jerome J. McGann and Barry Weller, 7 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980–93). Hereafter CPW .
All quotations from Byron’s poetry and drama (unless specified otherwise) will be taken from this edition.
Lord George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron: The Major Works , ed., intro. and notes Jerome McGann, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000). Hereafter McGann .
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley , ed. F. L. Jones, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964). Hereafter Letters: PBS .
All quotations from Shelley’s letters (unless specified otherwise) will be taken from this edition.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Major Works , ed., intro. and notes Zachary Leader and Michael O’Neill, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Hereafter Major Works .
All quotations from Shelley’s poetry, prose and drama (unless specified otherwise) will be taken from this edition.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley , ed. Donald Reiman, Neil Fraistat and Nora Crook, 3 vols to date (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000–). Hereafter CPPBS .
All quotations from Laon and Cythna; or the Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century in the Stanza of Spenser will be taken from this edition (vol. 3; pub. 2012).
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
The Holy Bible: Authorized King James Version (London: The British and Foreign Bible Society, 1957).
All quotations from the Bible will be from this edition.
INTRODUCTION
THE POET-HERO: ‘WHO SHALL TRACE THE VOID?’
The arresting sally that begins Don Juan sees Byron’s narrator insist on the hero as the centre and circumference of his self-proclaimed epic:

I want a hero: an uncommon want,
 When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
 The age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
 I’ll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan,
We all have seen him in the pantomime
Sent to the devil, somewhat ere his time.
( Don Juan I. 1: 1–8)
With a flourish, Byron’s narrator foregrounds two meanings of ‘want’. He immediately asserts himself as a narrator intent on holding the reader’s attention with his verbal virtuosity, even to the extent of excluding the hero he claims to want. Rather than seeming secondary and passive, he is the active figure, the shaping power and the central character of Don Juan . Byron leaves the reader with the impression that the narrator could have chosen another hero and, more importantly, he establishes that the hero needs the narrator. The balance of power is shifting but undecided: the narrator’s expressive power eclipses the hero, yet the narrator requires a hero for his epic. The narrator’s dominance over his hero remains incomplete. Placing hero and narrator alongside one another, Byron draws the reader’s attention to the symbiosis between them: word and deed vie for dominance in the work as the relationship between poet and hero becomes the animating force of Don Juan .
Shelley is equally compelled by the relationship between poet and hero, bringing the two figures together in his poetry and drama. He expands Wordsworth’s sense that the poet is ‘endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind’ to still greater heights by underscoring the responsibility of the poet to be both legislator and prophet in his Defence of Poetry , 1 where w