Byron and the Best of Poets
Byron was a man of many passions, always fiercely held and defended, but his intense devotion to the poetry of Alexander Pope seemed to characterise a man standing a little to the left of the Romantic universe. While Pope largely left a taste of dust in the mouths of the Romantics, Byron continued to defend the “little Queen Anne’s man” in letters and in print as if he were arguing for the reputation of a lover; so much so that we are left to wonder, what kind of impression did the greatest poet of the eighteenth century leave upon the work of the seminal poet of the nineteenth? How far and in what way did Byron’s adoration of Pope imprint itself upon his own poetry in conscious and unconscious echoes, in parallels of thought and expression, in the unexpected, unlooked-for congruence? This book identifies and lays out the most significant strands of that influence, following them wherever they lead.
Through exploring both poets’ satirical portraits of men and women, their expression of love and forbidden passion, their various poetic techniques, the influence of the Roman poet Horace, and the dual resonance of Eden and paradise in their work, a picture emerges of Pope touching the deepest recesses of Byron’s poetic thought. Amongst the particular themes discussed here are the presence of women in the lives and poetry of both men, the disentangling of the sense of alienation and exile exhibited in their authorial psyches, the significance of the doppelgänger for their satire, and a weighing of the deep contrapuntal nature of Byron’s thought, contrasting it with Pope’s. Byron and the Best of Poets is the first major study of its kind to explore these multiple aspects and to unpack them in the work of both poets.
Nicholas Gayle was the Head of Classics at Exmouth Community College before becoming seduced by the poetry of Lord Byron, which resulted in a determination to become an independent scholar devoted to writing about the poet’s work. He is the author of four essays published over the last few years in The Byron Journal, and this is his first full length book on the poet.
"“One of the charming features of this charming book is the way in which Nicholas Gayle takes ‘the passionate sincerity of Byron’s defence of Pope’ at face value…Although Gayle provides a good flavour of the Pope/Bowles Controversy in his opening chapter, he finds it by turns ‘curious’, ‘frustrating’ and ‘sterile’. Instead, his equally ambitious project—the first full-length study of Byron’s ‘lifelong interaction with Pope’—focuses almost exclusively on ‘verse intertexts’ while drawing upon ‘elements of biography and psychology’. Two of the book’s generously acknowledged presiders are Peter Cochran…and Bernard Beatty…But Gayle has his own distinctive voice and his own original insights. After a second chapter addressing the use of antithesis, enjambment and caesura in couplet and octave, he embarks upon two hundred pages of lively close reading...Gayle’s determination to ‘follow the thinking wherever it leads’ is admirable but three of the strengths of his approach carry with them potential dangers…One of the book’s most brilliant observations is that Byron’s ‘eighteenth-century’ preoccupation with genre taxonomy appears to subside at a critical juncture: ‘he wrote a “Romaunt”, a “Mystery`’, a “Venetian Tale”, a “Fragment of a Turkish Tale”, a play as “Dramatic Poem” etc.—and yet strangely put no title to the first manuscript page of “Don Juan”.’ Here Gayle makes us better acquainted with what we should have known familiarly…Gayle’s finest comparison of Pope and Byron concentrates on ‘a particular quality of conversational tone’ in the portrayals of Pitholeon and Raucocanti. He demonstrates how the caricature of Pope as a poet of uniform pace and pause was such a wilful (if in many ways understandable) Romantic misreading. He also helps us begin to see how keeping ‘tune and time’, the anxious burden of the post-Augustan heroic couplet, becomes a relished part of the performance in anglicised ottava rima. Applause, in spite of faults, is due this book for the passionate sincerity with which Nicholas Gayle champions Byron and Pope and for his insistence that ‘the poetry is the thing’.”
David Woodhouse,
The Byron Society, 2018
“Everyone knows that Byron hugely admired Pope but no one has examined this extensively. Nicholas Gayle does this with engaging aplomb, infectious enthusiasm, and a pleasing combination of honesty and authority. He discloses not only the obvious connections between the two, but subtle cross-currents in their ideas, ethics, and the very texture of their verse. A must-read for all Byronists and Popeians, but this will and should also be read by scholars and anyone interested in literature.”
Bernard Beatty
Senior Fellow, School of English, University of Liverpool; Associate Fellow, School of Divinity, University of St Andrews
"This is an excellent and long needed piece of work. It has always surprised some readers that Byron admired Pope so much, and this is the first full and convincing explanation. It benefits from the attention it gives to classical sources and analogues, something often neglected in Byron studies, and shows skill both in handling historical/biographical details and especially in local observations on the text of Byron's poems. It also makes good use of lesser known items in Byron's canon such as The Island. The writing is clear and unaffected, and the structure of the argument pretty clear. This work will be the standard treatment of the topic for a long time to come."
Pat Rogers Distinguished University Professor, Eminent Scholar and DeBartolo Chair of the Humanities, University of South Florida
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