Chris Washington
Francis Marion University
Like any good study of Byron does, Anthony Howe takes his subject seriously as both a writer and thinker, but unlike other studies Howe’s book features a methodology perfectly in line with Byron’s own compositional practices. Howe intentionally plays with the scholarly book form in order to demonstrate how form evinces its own complicated thought process, just as, the book argues, the forms of Byron’s poems do. Howe’s book adopts an essayistic approach, as does Byron on Howe’s reading, even in Byron’s most seemingly non-essayistic works like Don Juan (1819-1824). Positioning himself against the idea that Byron was an important literary and cultural historical figure but not an important writer as famously encapsulated by Goethe and Arnold’s opinions, both of who labeled him an anti-intellectual, Howe seeks to reclaim Byron from this critical judgment, which Byron has never fully shaken off.
The larger context...
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