'Byron's Religions' Nottingham Trent University 1 May 2010

The one-day Byron conference at Nottingham Trent University, organised by the Newstead Abbey Byron Society, Nottingham Trent University and the Midlands Romantic Seminar, traditionally falls on the first weekend of May, and this year it was for the seventh time that scholars and students from near and far gathered at this perhaps most Byronic of British locations to engage in a full day's academic work. Comme d'habitude, on the eve of the conference, a dinner was organised by the Newstead Abbey Byron Society, providing a pleasant social prelude to the academic proceedings. Unlike in previous years, the dinner was held at Pappas, a Greek taverna in the vicinity of the Nottinghamshire County Hall, a warm venue obliterating the caprice of a wet April evening. Having dined and wined and enjoyed the dessert listening to live Greek music, the participants were driven back to the Beeches Hotel for the afterdinner event, another fine and memorable conference tradition. This year's theme being religion, delegates were treated to a brilliant tandem reading of parallel quotations from Byron and the Bible by Bernard Beatty (Liverpool and St Andrews) and Peter Cochran (Newstead Abbey Byron Society), followed by an impromptu meditation on Byron and the emotion of faith by Canon Linda Church, rector of St Mary Magdalene church in Hucknall between 2003 and 2009, and a poignant coda by Beatty inspired by the famous inscription on the manuscript of Canto I of Don Juan: 'I would to heaven that I were so much clay / As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling'. The evening's entertainment set the mood for contemplation and discussion that was to be continued the following day.

In the morning, participants made their way to the Ada Byron Building on Nottingham Trent's Clifton campus and were welcomed by Ken Purslow from the Newstead Abbey Byron Society and Carl Thompson from Nottingham Trent. Due to a concurrent conference at the same venue resulting in a shortage of space, the programme had had to be adjusted a few weeks earlier so that, departing from traditional arrangements, both plenary lectures were rescheduled to take place in the morning, followed by all four parallel sessions in the afternoon. However unorthodox, the morning juxtaposition of the two plenaries proved to be extremely stimulating. The first lecture was given by Mr Beatty and chaired by Dr Cochran. Beatty addressed the theme of Byron's orthodoxy in relation to his sense of sin, which set him apart from his contemporaries, as well as his ability to see unity in multiplicity and his careful construction of poetry that, through wonder and suffering, exceeds mere aesthetic remedy, poised as it is between bright and dark elements. Inter alia, Beatty discussed Schleiermacher's treatise 'On Religion', James Kennedy, Cain, Heaven and Earth, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and the character of Aurora Raby. After a short break, the second plenary was given by Richard Cardwell (Nottingham) and chaired by Ken Purslow (Newstead Abbey Byron Society). Focusing on Manfred and Cain in relation to the theory of Catastrophism and the works of Buffon and Cuvier, Professor Cardwell traced Byron's metaphysical journey through these works, a journey concerned with the causality of crime and punishment, and revealing the poet's melancholic holding-up of love as the last sustaining illusion as well as his revolt against a system that lacks sense.

After the lunch break, the first pair of parallel sessions commenced, featuring three speakers each. One session was chaired by Imke Heuer (York). The first speaker was Merve Tokmakcioglu (Bosphorus) who addressed the duality represented by Byron's strictly Calvinist upbringing in contrast to his scornful attitude to traditional Christian values. Taking up Manfred as a case study, she discussed the themes of salvation, damnation, self-loathing and vanity in relation to the Byronic Hero. The second speaker, Andreas Makrides from Athens, addressed the subject of Gnosticism, tracing the movement's historical origins and characteristics, describing its key topos of the existence of evil in the world and connecting the themes of death, pain and ugliness to Byron's Cain and its biographical...