Student Byron Conference: ‘Byron – Romantic Icon’ Edge Hill University 25 May 2011

On 25 May of this year, the department of English and History at Edge Hill University hosted the first UK-based student Byron conference. Forming part of the ‘Romanticism at Edge Hill’ research forum, the conference invited second- and third-year undergraduates, masters students and first-year PhD students from around the UK to present papers to an audience of their peers and scholars of Romantic literature. The conference was organised in collaboration with The Byron Centre at the University of Manchester.

The theme of the conference was ‘Byron – Romantic Icon’, and eight students delivered papers. Dr Christine Kenyon-Jones (King’s College London), Dr Jonathan Shears (Keele) and Professor Mike Bradshaw (Edge Hill) chaired the sessions. The keynote speaker, Bernard Beatty (Liverpool and St Andrews), began the discussion with his paper, entitled ‘Romantic Icon: Byron’s Sense of Poetry’. This examined the idea that for Byron poetry is feeling, and came to the conclusion that, as a result, Byron’s poetry is meshed in multiplicities. Beatty explored not only Byron’s ability to amalgamate the actual and the fictional, but also his capacity to convey simultaneous feelings of sadness and exuberance in his poetry. He concluded with a discussion of the inherently transgressive nature of poetry itself, and Beatty questioned the ethics of a medium that had the capability to synchronously delineate, yet also exalt, transgression. Beatty’s delivery of the paper was entertaining, and yet the focus of the day was not on the keynote speakers. Rather, as one of the conference organisers, Mary Hurst (Edge Hill), commented, ‘the conference was about the students, and the provision of an opportunity to experience one of many postgraduate activities, and to learn new academic skills’. It was also more than this – the conference was an opportunity for students from all around the UK to demonstrate their academic knowledge, and celebrate their love, of Byron’s poetry.

After a coffee break, and a quick photo opportunity for the students, chairs and keynote speakers, the conference resumed. I was the first student to give a paper and my title was ‘“Dead scandals form good subjects for dissection”: The Dynamism of Scandal in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, The Vision of Judgment and Don Juan’. The paper opened with a discussion and analysis of the influence that personal scandal had upon Byron’s life and poetry, before moving on to a consideration of the importance of self-exile in conjunction with Byron’s ability to combine seriousness with levity, and then concluding with an exploration of the notion that the melancholic being is fuelled and perpetuated by scandal. The paper sought to offer insight into scandal in the nineteenth-century and argued that ultimately it is an integral part of understanding Byron as both a poet and a man. ‘Scandal’, Byron wrote, ‘has something so piquant, it is a sort of cayenne to the mind – I confess I like it’.

Charlotte May (Nottingham) then spoke about alternative approaches to the construction of Byron’s contemporary reputation, focusing on Scrope Berdmore Davies. Her paper, entitled ‘Scrope Berdmore Davies: Byron’s Huncamunca’, began with an etymological discussion of Byron’s use of the word ‘huncamunca’ (a word as ambiguous today as it was in the nineteenth-century). May then went on to explore the relationship between Byron and Davies in more detail, establishing the latter as ‘not a follower of Byronism’ but rather in many ways a ‘creator of it’, even suggesting that Byron’s own iconic image involved an imitation of the stance that Davies took towards society. Though he is difficult to track through history, Davies is mostly available to us in unpublished manuscripts and through his complicated social connections. Davies’ relationships with women are especially interesting, and May contended that his relationship with Lady Oxford, and possibly with Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster, suggested ideas of sexual parallels between him and Byron.

After lunch the conference resumed with a live close-reading session, inviting the chairs, audience and guests to take part in the discussion of an extract from Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage II (stanzas...