The Cambridge Companion to Byron

Contemporary Review, April, 2005

The Cambridge Companion to Byron. Drummond Bone, editor. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]45.00 (US$65.00). xx 305 pages. ISBN 0-521-78676-2. Because Byron appeals and repels from so many different angles this collection of sixteen essays is divided into three 'contexts'. The first, historical, has four papers which look at Byron's tumultuous life and his biographers, the relationship between the poet and the 'business of publishing', his political views and the now popular topic of his 'gender and sexuality'.

The second part is concerned with 'textual contexts' and has seven essays: heroism and history in Childe Harold I and II and the Tales, Byron's involvement with Panhellenism as seen in Child Harold II; the third Canto of Child Harold and Manfred; Byron's relations with the theatre; Child Harold IV, Don Juan and Beppo; The Vision of Judgment and the 'visions of "author"'; and Byron's prose. The third part, devoted to 'literary contexts' has five essays dealing with the lyric poetry, his relation to Shakespeare, Byron and the eighteenth century, Byron's reception in Europe, and, finally, 'Byron, postmodernism and intertexuality'. The essays are prefaced by a chronology and a short introduction and aim at 'a good overview of what one can only call the Byron phenomenon' which now spreads round the world and shows no sign of decline. (A.C.)