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accept more readily the inconclusiveness of skeptical thought”, 216 and yet theacceptance of inconclusiveness is no more present in Don Juan than is the acceptanceof conclusiveness. Andrew M Cooper is closer in saying, “Byron’s scepticism is lessa definite philosophic rationalism than a perpetual process of pragmaticadjustment”: 217 it is an atelic method, not a finished system. The activity ofphilosophizing thus remains a major component of the rhetor’s role in Don Juan:I love Wisdom more than she loves me;My tendency is to philosophizeOn most things, from a tyrant to a tree;But still the spouseless Virgin Knowledge flies.What are we? and whence came we? what shall beOur ultimate existence? what’s our present?Are questions answerless, and yet incessant. (6.63.498-504).These questions being “incessant” means that the issues are not simply abandoned,and the rhetor does not relax either into an assured materialism or into a complacentapathy regarding metaphysics. 218 Instead, there is a constant attempt to answer theunanswerable, regardless of the prediction of complete absence of lasting success:I would solicit free discussionUpon all points no matter what, or whose –Because as Ages upon Ages push on,[…]What was a paradox becomes a truth orA something like it – as bear witness Luther! (17.6.41-3, 7-8).The ideological stability of lasting philosophical success, however, is not necessaryfor a thinker who is capable of holding contradictory propositions in tension: “I leave216 McCabe, ‘A Secret Prepossession: Skepticism in Byron’s Don Juan’, Renascence, 28 (1975), pp3-14: 7.217 Cooper, ‘Shipwreck and Skepticism in Don Juan’, Keats-Shelley Journal, 32 (1983), 83-80 (p.75).218 This is wherein any such system as Pyrrhonism does not apply, because the traditional stoiccalmness is not attained by the rhetor of Don Juan.139
the thing a problem, like all things” (17.13.97). This approaches the Greek Sceptics’εποχη, but it is not formalised as a system. 219 The doubt appears to depend moreupon a pragmatic recognition of the limits of human knowledge than upon anyphilosophical self-justification. Nonetheless, the rhetor, and perhaps the poet, cantake pride in being in elite company, since “‘Que sçais-je’ was the motto ofMontaigne, /As also of the first Academicians” (9.17.129-30).The strongest articulations of scepticism present agnosis elevated to radical, reflexivedoubt:There’s no such thing as certainty, that’s plainAs any of Mortality’s Conditions:So little do we know what we are about inThis world, I doubt if doubt itself be doubting. (9.17.133-6).Such reflexive doubt undermines unbelief as well as belief, and thus the rhetor’s claimwith respect to the belief in ghosts, that “you must be in my condition, /Before youlearn to call this superstition” (15.98.783-4) is equally applicable to any form of beliefabout metaphysics. This doubt is universal. The apparent Pyrrhonism continuesthrough much of the poem, predicated upon radical epistemological doubt, the sheerdifficulty of establishing and thus knowing anything at all for certain. Thus,If from great Nature’s or our own abyssOf thought, we could but snatch a certainty,Perhaps mankind might find the path they miss –But then ’twould spoil much good philosophy.[…]Pray tell me, can you make fast,After due search, your faith to any question?Look back o’er ages, ere unto the stake fast219 Q.v. Hoagwood, and also Anne K Mellor’s English Romantic Irony.140
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AbstractAlthough Lord Byron’s poe
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NotesThe referencing of this thesis
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Introduction ......................
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IntroductionThe poetry of George Go
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nineteenth century, 6 and the power
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of Lord Byron (1978), and also the
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The Giaour as “a separate, disemb
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generations since, have been inclin
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The purpose of this study is to rec
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Although moral censure is consisten
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House of Lords on April 21, 1812, f
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For the British Review, William Rob
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[Harold], and the moral to be deduc
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not merely a difference of opinion,
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noting that it would have been “m
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Part of the meaning of the poem’s
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The TextOne of the initial question
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deliberate movement away from a foc
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The most recurrent proximate source
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understanding, nor yet favour to me
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Nature: “Age shakes Athena’s to
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Religion is further questioned as t
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Our life is a false nature - ’tis
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the fallen world, and separation fr
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epeatedly throughout the poem, a si
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idolatrous course: “Three hosts c
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Earth paved like Heaven (3.50.444-9
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egarding “Wahab’s rebel brood w
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The Greeks also - a kind of Eastern
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Idol, saint, virgin, prophet, cresc
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Is’t not enough, unhappy thing! t
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Christ! it is a goodly sight to see
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“thunder, and flame” of the thu
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As haunts the unquench’d soul - p
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e called reflective; for dogmatic f
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Of mortal bondage, by these spirits
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Thou glorious mirror, where the Alm
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of the world, it is the home of fai
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Religion itself does not play a maj
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Its poetical merits have been extol
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The Poet’s DefenceMuch of the sca
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what the Writer says of D[on] J[uan
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Page 92 and 93: Since Kinnaird was not Murray, the
Page 94 and 95: His reference to their Christianity
Page 96 and 97: Juan lays claim. The claim of the s
Page 98 and 99: factor in all of them is the unlimi
Page 100 and 101: Further, in reasserting the role of
Page 102 and 103: common view of the proper role of a
Page 104 and 105: But though I am a temperate theolog
Page 106 and 107: I don’t pretend that I quite unde
Page 108 and 109: It is such incongruities between th
Page 110 and 111: (1.194.1546-7) for his interests, m
Page 112 and 113: You have freed the blacks - now pra
Page 114 and 115: as a moral warning to guard against
Page 116 and 117: Perpetual Virginity. At this point,
Page 118 and 119: this I heard her say, and can’t b
Page 120 and 121: could refer to Jesus’ own bloody
Page 122 and 123: classes. The exhortation, while fac
Page 124 and 125: it does not support Christian exclu
Page 126 and 127: As Hell - mere mortals who their po
Page 128 and 129: particular, and so “Turk” is in
Page 130 and 131: Consistently, war is damned by a co
Page 132 and 133: ead your Bible, sir, and mind your
Page 134 and 135: the steward reduces someone’s deb
Page 136 and 137: Don Juan includes a questioning of
Page 138 and 139: This is one of the passages which t
Page 142 and 143: You bind yourself, and call some mo
Page 144 and 145: By those who sow them in a land tha
Page 146 and 147: The agnosticism of Don Juan is unsy
Page 148 and 149: Notably, the poet does not repeat t
Page 150 and 151: So Cuvier says; - and then shall co
Page 152 and 153: This view of Creation as diminution
Page 154 and 155: Universe universal Egotism!That all
Page 156 and 157: Notably, it is the ‘ideal’ whic
Page 158 and 159: might occur here below. Much the sa
Page 160 and 161: nor wholly mortal, and the Virgin M
Page 162 and 163: championed in the House of Lords. A
Page 164 and 165: so that even when he pray’dHe tur
Page 166 and 167: To claim that it is wit based on de
Page 168 and 169: If we were told suddenly that Canto
Page 170 and 171: The Eastern Tales: Islam versus Chr
Page 172 and 173: Byron’s use of Turkish and Arabic
Page 174 and 175: Religious and Ethnic TensionEurocen
Page 176 and 177: [….]Gloom is gathered o’er the
Page 178 and 179: discrimination absent from his sour
Page 180 and 181: Muslims may be included amongst the
Page 185: culture.” 283 It is worth noting,
Page 188 and 189: It is to be observed, that every al
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Christian apologists nearly every t
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the description of the scene surrou
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On its table still beholdThe cup of
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Whereas the Turkish troops are bloo
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“conditional immortality”, in w
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The immortal virgins appear again i
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expression of it is, in part, merel
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This is a far more politic represen
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their much more limited value: toys
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unusual, or at all specific to his
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Gulnare to die painfully than to be
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eating the fruit. Genesis describes
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fails to fit in with his ideals, an
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(C 3.8.301), but this, too, is miti
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and them as devils. Nonetheless, th
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factor. The struggle between determ
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Notably, for his despair to be stro
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In pain, my faltering tongue had tr
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Ere his very thought could pray,Una
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Satan, appears in the work of a few
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It is worth noticing, too, that alt
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Conrad is about to attack Seyd, and
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ut the Christian narrator is in no
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another spice of wickedness. Furthe
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despite the many pages which Sale d
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etween Manfred and Astarte. 378arti
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on the same level as Manfred, and s
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dropped from “a dreadful height
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May light upon your head (3.4.48-50
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out of heaven, /Where thou art not
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possibly a reference to someone lik
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genuflection. In part, this may be
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comments about the nature of this u
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the one who delivers this curse, es
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In Genesis, in the middle of the ga
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And ask them what it is we dread to
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clay again” (2.2.78-9). The Witch
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DespairOne of the contemporary obje
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need punishment, as he himself come
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Manfred refers to “the Maker” a
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dead?”, presenting support for th
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Viewing himself as the cause of her
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Every reader will be struck with th
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Which makes you tremble - by the cl
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he is no Prometheus but a Prometheu
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Devil to resist. This displaces the
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describes it as “Byron’s comple
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a few feeble declarations of the wo
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to one another. 455 Contemporary cr
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nothing to do” (McGann 5.297:72-3
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much about one or the other? They c
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While the reversal (peripeteia) and
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lasphemy, all must fall prostrate b
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It is useful to consider that Lucif
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Innumerable, more endurable,By the
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The prospect’s partner enters, an
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poet: the assumption is that the ch
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knowledge. When Cain has said that
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she says that God has told them tha
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These exchanges, along with the ref
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topic in which he is only losing gr
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Him makes thee mine the same. (1.1.
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following him will prevent Adah’s
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Cain’s primary interest is the sa
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The immediately evident difference
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Cain’s eventual realization by 2.
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wife in cursing his son (3.1.448).
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Thy guide hath done thee evil (3.1.
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GodWith the contemporary responses
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Cain, “thou art evil” (2.2.220)
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Lucifer attempts to answer it by an
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answer to the question: 525 in gene
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ADAH:thy God is alone; and is he ha
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The reception of the two dramas has
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orthodox viewpoints. Raphael is con
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The versions in Heaven and Earth co
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No, not to save all earth, were ear
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It is also reminiscent of the Genes
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of Calvinism: as Ray Stevens notes,
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degree than their actions thus far.
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DogmatismThe dogmatism of the chara
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while Noah claims to not be judgeme
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Then dieWith them!How dar’st thou
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He appears, at first, to have been
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[…]blessed be the Lord (1.3.883-4
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cataclysm in which everyone else wi
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the criticism of the unorthodoxy of
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ConclusionThere is a reverent impat
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are vicious bigots, and its God is
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This radical reinvention of religio
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not the triumphantly outreaching se
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