Title: Byron and Intertextuality Laureate Triumph in Childe Harold IV: Staël, Hemans, Hobhouse, Byron
Abstract: That's what Byron protested, in words seldom reprinted, when his friend John Cam Hobhouse proposed 'a wreath about the brows' of a heroic bust he'd commissioned of the poet in Rome.1 Byron's words indicate that his upcoming fourth and perhaps 'greatest' canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818)—a poem he hadn't meant to write-might be read as a poem of laureate triumph.2 In its 'verses', the poet speaks of aspiring to 'fame' and 'laurels' in his 'land's language': if the 'blight' on his 'fortunes' means that laurels 'light … on a loftier head', so be it; 'awkward assumption' or not, he has expressed his interest (CHP IV, 9–10). The canto would emulate the progress of a laureate to Rome, retracing Byron's own steps, starting with a pilgrimage to places associated with laureate poets Petrarch and Tasso, and to Florence with its museums and Dantean associations, past places evoking Rome's republic and the laureate Horace, to Rome and all its sights. His poem would combine hope and despair over Italy's present captivity to Austria and enact a scene of laureate crisis in the Coliseum. Those laurels: the verses couldn't do without them.
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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