Byron and Romanticism

This 2002 collection of essays represents twenty-five years of work by one of the most important critics of Romanticism and Byron studies, Jerome McGann. The collection demonstrates McGann's evolution as a scholar, editor, critic, theorist, and historian. His 'General Analytic and Historical Introduction' to the collection presents a meditation on the history of his own research on Byron, in particular how scholarly editing interacted with the theoretical innovations in literary criticism over the last quarter of the twentieth century. McGann's receptiveness to dialogic forms of criticism is also illustrated in this collection, which contains an interview and concludes with a dialogue between McGann and the editor. Many of these essays have previously been available only in specialist scholarly journals. Now McGann's influential work on Byron can be appreciated more widely by new generations of students and scholars.

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'[Jerome McGann's] Byron and Romanticism represents a quarter century of important scholarly work on the subtle ironies of Byron's poetry and of the Byzantine connections between that poetry and Byron's complicated life. McGann is especially interested in Byron's complex 'double-speaking'. Here's a critic who understands that Byron is always playing games with his audience - actually, with multiple audiences. And that they are extremely tricky, contradictory games … McGann's larger aim is to reform literary studies, to bring about a new synthesis of traditional, pragmatic criticism and hyper-sophisticated theory. His book is a step in the right direction toward a reform that the serious study of literature urgently needs …'. Ron Smith, Richmond Times-Dispatch

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Product details

• Date Published: August 2002
• format: Paperback
• isbn: 9780521007221
• length: 326 pages

• dimensions: 228 x 152 x 16 mm
• weight: 0.46kg
• availability: Available