Byron and Marginality

'Literary studies often focus either on centrality or on what lies beyond, as if demarcation between cohesion and disparity were a thin line with no space of its own. Surveying centres and margins in Byron's work, Norbert Lennartz introduces his collection of fifteen critical explorations into the wide margins: geographical, historical, cultural and moral.'Frederick Burwick, University of CaliforniaExplores Byron as the figurehead of Romanticism and the writer of provocatively 'marginal' textsThis book approaches Byron from a completely new angle: no longer seen in terms of his status as a celebrity and a star on the book-selling market, Byron is instead seen as an outsider both culturally, for his iconoclastic views of life and literature, and socially. Pilgrims in pursuit of non-existing shrines, women as man-eating giants and viragos, cannibalism, suicide, black humour and other provocatively border-crossing topics leave scholars hopelessly at a loss as to where they should categorise Byron and what they should do with his penchant for marginal themes, genres and characters. Byron caters to numerous Romantic clichés (Weltschmerz, melancholy, subjectivity), while simultaneously reverting to genres, themes and motifs that cast him as a pre- or even anti-Romantic. This collection will trigger new debates in Byron scholarship and show that terms such as canonicity and marginality tend to be blurry and stand in constant need of re-negotiation.Norbert Lennartz is Full Professor of English Literature at the University of Vechta.Cover image: Lord Byron Shaking the Dust of England from His Shoes, Max Beerbohm, 1904 © The Granger CollectionCover design:[EUP logo]edinburghuniversitypress.comISBN 978-1-4744-3941-1Barcode