'Byron and Revolution': 14th International Student Byron Conference 20–25 May 2019

The 14th International Student Byron Conference, with the theme of 'Byron and Revolution', began on Monday, 20 May, with a welcome at the Messolonghi Byron Research Center in the Byron House, where participants met members of the Messolonghi Byron Society and began getting acquainted with each other. An early-evening visit to the Cathedral of Agios Spyridon and to the beach at Tourlida was followed by a tour of the Municipal Museum of History and Art Gallery. Participants were formally welcomed by the Deputy Mayor of Messolonghi, Mr. Tasos Skarmoutsos.

On Tuesday, after edifying visits to the Trikoupis House-Museum and the Garden of the Heroes, the Academic Programme began with Professor Andrew Stauffer's insightful keynote address on 'Byron at Waterloo', a Hegelian reading of Byron's treatment of Waterloo and the reception of the Waterloo stanzas in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage III. Professor Stauffer (Virginia) was introduced by Professor Peter Graham (Virginia Tech).

Professor John Gatton (Bellarmine) followed with 'Battlefields as Byronic Performance', a look at how Byron dramatises the Battle of Marathon in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage II and at the not-altogether-consistent contemporary and subsequent accounts of visiting and then dramatising Waterloo. Professor Stephen Minta (York) finished the session with 'Byron and Napoleon', tracing Byron's shifting attitudes toward Napoleon and political action. This first panel was followed by a visit to the Diexodos Historic Museum and dinner at the fish taverna at Tourlida.

On Tuesday, Maria Sfeir (Notre Dame, Lebanon) opened the second session with 'The Orient Fights Back', a postcolonial reading of The Corsair that subverts Orientalist tropes to argue Conrad is defeated by resisting his feminine unconscious whereas Gulnare triumphs by embracing her masculine unconscious. Amelia Dirks (Vanderbilt) presented a provocative enumeration of the doublings and fragmentations of Lady Caroline Lamb and Byron in Glenarvon, showing the novel's strengths and shortcomings as an instrument of critique of Byron's behaviour. Hou Kaiwen (King's College London) closed the session with 'Doubt and Murder: Cain's Humanistic Liberation', evaluating Cain and Milton's Satan as potential revolutionaries.

On Wednesday, session three opened with Katie Smith (York), whose 'Revolutions Abroad' was a cogent exploration of the Rousseau stanzas in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage III, in which Byron uses Rousseau as a thought experiment to understand revolution and passion, giving him—and us—a useful lens to cope with Byron's own uncertainties about revolutionary action. Next, Professor Naji Oueijan (Notre Dame, Lebanon), in 'Lord Byron, America, and Americans', explored the sources in which Byron expressed his fondness for America and its people, linking this positive feeling to Byron's sincere republicanism. Jack Furth (Virginia Tech) rounded off the panel with an account of Captain Jonathan P. Miller, an American abolitionist, a Philhellene who fought in Greece, and the eventual purchaser of Byron's sword. Miller, though quite different from Byron, shared a common strain of liberalism with him and put Byron's beliefs on freedom into practice. In the evening Professor Roderick Beaton (King's College London), welcomed by Rosa Florou and introduced by Peter Graham, gave a keynote address in Greek to a large audience of conference participants and Messolonghiots at the Radio Center, on the topic of 'Lord Byron: From Legend to Political Reality'. Following Professor Beaton's Greek keynote, participants joined in a gala celebration, including dinner and traditional dancing.

On Thursday morning, session four opened with Samantha Crain (Minnesota) on 'Poetic Experimentation and Political Exile', a comparative analysis of Byron's and Shelley's respective uses of terza rima in 1819 to explore political themes. Then Michael Damyanovich (Trinity College Dublin) presented 'The Historicity of Byron's Marino Faliero in Risorgimento Venice', a thoroughly contextualised examination of how Byron adapts the historical Faliero to serve his own purposes while still insisting on his own factual accuracy. Professor Beaton finished the panel with a talk in English, 'From Italy to Greece', a deft explanation of how Byron's earlier political considerations—including his experiences in the House of Lords—informed his 1823 decision to commit to the Greek cause.

Eleonora Colli (King's...