The Poet-Hero in the Work of Byron and Shelley

by Madeleine Callaghan

Overview

Byron’s and Shelley’s experimentation with the possibilities and pitfalls of poetic heroism unites their work. The Poet-Hero in the Work of Byron and Shelley traces the evolution of the poet-hero in the work of both poets, revealing that the struggle to find words adequate to the poet’s imaginative vision and historical circumstance is their central poetic achievement. Madeleine Callaghan explores the different types of poetic heroism that evolve in Byron’s and Shelley’s poetry and drama. Both poets experiment with, challenge and embrace a variety of poetic forms and genres, and this book discusses such generic exploration in the light of their developing versions of the poet-hero. The heroism of the poet, as an idea, an ideal and an illusion, undergoes many different incarnations and definitions as both poets shape distinctive and changing conceptions of the hero throughout their careers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783088973
Publisher:	Anthem Press
Publication date:	02/28/2019
Series:	Anthem Nineteenth-Century Series , #1
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	330,195
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Madeleine Callaghan is a senior lecturer in Romantic Literature at the University of Sheffield, UK. She has published various articles and chapters on Romantic and post-Romantic poetry. Callaghan is the author of Shelley’s Living Artistry: Letters, Poems, Plays (2017), co-author of The Romantic Poetry Handbook (2018) and co-editor of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry: Hardy to Mahon (2011).

Table of 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.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

‘Recognising the Romantic Period’s fascination with heroism, Madeleine Callaghan’s strikingly original account explores the imaginative interchanges between Byron and Shelley over their aspirations and anxieties about casting the poet as hero. Paying close critical attention to questions of genre, Callaghan’s study significantly revises our understanding of the poet-hero within Romanticism.’
—Mark Sandy, Professor, Department of English Studies, Durham University, UK

‘Dr Callaghan’s [...] study will be the first examination of the formal ramifications of combative creative energy in the works of Lord Byron and P. B. Shelley for over four decades, tracing the ways in which their allied but opposed poetic voices responded to traditional and contemporary constructions of heroism.’
—Jane Stabler, Professor, School of English, University of St Andrews, UK

http://www.bars.ac.uk/review/index.php/barsreview/article/view/319

Editorial Reviews

Callaghan has hit upon an interesting point of convergence between Byron and Shelley with her discussion of the poet-hero. She is a great reader of poetry, and I learned a lot from her analyses of specific stanzas and lines in both Byron’s and Shelley’s works. — Alexander Grammatikos, Langara College, Vancouver, BC, Canada, European Romantic Review (2021)

"Callaghan's reading of the complexities that inhabit Byron and Shelley's conception of the poet-hero provides a compelling conceptual work of Byronic and Shelleyan aspiration, although often anxious, to render poetic language as deed. Such a study reconfigures our understanding of Romantic poetry and will exert a lasting influence on generations of students and scholars of Romantic literature. — Review by Francesco Marchionni, Madeleine Callaghan, The Poet-Hero in the Work of Byron and Shelley. London: Anthem Press, 2019. pp. 240. ISBN 9781783088973."

From the Publisher