‘Byron and Poetry’ Nottingham Trent University 30 April 2011

This conference began with a performance proving that one of Byron’s greatest poems, The Vision of Judgment, was actually one of his greatest literary dramas. For the pre-conference dinner entertainment, Peter Cochran, the conference organiser, divided the poem into particular voices and asked one person to play the voice of each character. The result was a performance in which the voice of any single dominant narrator swiftly disappeared. Alongside poetic form, poetry as performance became one of the key discussion points of the conference during the following day.

The keynote speaker, Professor Michael O’Neill (Durham), began the conference with ‘“Inextinguishable Energy”: Byron and Poetic Form’. Focused on Byron’s uses of poetic form, O’Neill denied the idea that form is a kind of poetic restriction. Instead, he argued, poetic form strays beyond aesthetic space even while occupying it, and exists as a device through which sentiment is expressed. The construction of poetic forms is a sort of cathartic therapy and aids the expression of opinions, suggesting, nevertheless, that the opinions and content of the narrative are not always the stated ones. Ultimately, form is a device and one that Byron uses to express his convictions about existentialist absorption.

‘Byron, Pope and Feminine Endings’ by Bernard Beatty (Liverpool) examined the influence of Pope on Byron, and was one of the first papers focused on Byron’s place in poetic history. By examining Byron’s poetry through the template of ‘feminine endings’, the roots of Byron’s Augustan view of poetry were exposed, while it also became clear that Byron relied upon this particular poetic form in ways that were deeply influenced by Augustan style.

Byron as a poet of both aesthetic and Romantic space rapidly became another of the themes of the conference. Throughout the day the influence of canonical literary figures upon Byron was explored, right up to the final session, which Robert McColl (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) opened with a paper on ‘Spenserians v. ottava rima’. This discussed Beppo and Shakespearean influences, while also bringing Spenserian perspectives to Byron’s poetry. The position of Byron within Romanticism was questioned here, as elsewhere. Milton’s influence, as a precursor of Romantic (particularly Blakean) poetry, was discussed in ‘Byron, Milton and the Satanic Heroine’ by Anna Camilleri (Oxford), which used the Miltonic Satan as a template for thinking about Byron’s portrayal of femininity. The position of Byron as a Romantic was, nevertheless, reconciled with his relations to these other canonical literary figures.

As the influence of the Augustan upon Byron demonstrates, the liberation of Romanticism from the Augustan is denied by Byron. Catherine Addison (Zululand) made this very clear in her paper on ‘Byronic Free Verse: The “Tetrameter” Romances’. The tensions between Byron the Augustan and Byron the Romantic were thrown into sharp relief here, as Addison explored the enclosed rhyming structures of Parisina, The Siege of Corinth and Mazeppa, questioned Byron’s position within Romantic tradition, but also pointed out that Byron’s use of tetrameter echoes that of Coleridge, inviting parallels between Christabel, The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos.

In an attempt to better know Byron personally, Marina Ragachewskaya (Minsk State), in ‘“The Dream” and “Darkness” on a Psychoanalytic Couch’, applied a Freudian perspective to specific linguistic features of these poems. Paying close linguistic attention to ‘misnamed Death and existence’, the thought processes and subjects of the dream-visions were seen to be contained within particular lexical fields, suggesting that an individual’s psychology might be responsible for, and revealed by, poetic style as well as content, and that ‘style’ and ‘content’ cannot be seen as antithetical. The themes of dreams and death were continued, and linked to Byron’s epitaphs, in ‘Byron, Wordsworth and the Place of Epitaph in Lyric Poetry’ by Adam White (Manchester). Applying the template of Byron’s ‘A Fragment’, White focused on Byron’s positioning of himself within mortality while yearning to transcend mortality through fame and literary reputation: the ‘spot’ of a man’s existence in mortal time is marked by the physical remembrance of a ‘praise-encumber’d stone’. The use of...