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If we were told suddenly that Cantos XIII to XVIII were in fact a cunning laterinterpolation by Cardinal Newman disguised as Byron’s own work – and inother contexts we are often asked to take such things in our stride – thenreceived opinion would undoubtedly condemn the blatant, Catholicpropaganda of the fable. 256The strength of the pro-Catholic sentiment in Don Juan might be a result of thefreedom, especially in lay Catholicism, from the nervous rationalism which formedsuch a part of contemporary English Protestantism. The quest for a natural theologyand a scientific religion was a threat to the creative exercise of faith which apparentlyappealed to Byron: the romanticised idealist religion could always be more virtuousand hence more admirable than the imperfect version practised in the world.ConclusionDon Juan was condemned by contemporary conservative critics for its ‘immorality’,but they were reading obscenity as irreligion, when the poet was employingcoarseness as wit. More-liberal critics saw the poem quite differently, leaving laterreaders no cause to assume that the conservatives alone were representative of themores of the time.Don Juan is not a blasphemous poem, and instead it adopts, adheres to, and evenvalidates a Christian perspective. This perspective is not profaned and undermined bythe jocularity of the poem, which allows the rhetor to address topics in a familiar andcomfortable fashion, as is underlined by the poet’s own consistent claims, in the poemand outside of it, in defence of Don Juan’s moral virtues.A crucial part of the construction of those virtues in the poem is the rhetorical natureof the work, its character as almost a written speech, and very definitely as a crafteddiscourse. That discourse does satirise hypocrisy, and particularly betrayal of claimedpiety, but it frequently adopts both the images and the values of orthodox Christian256 Beatty, p.154.167
elief. This is vivid in its continuation of CHP’s condemnation of war, andparticularly in its own association of war with Hell.Orthodoxy is generally given a positive representation, as is the Bible, but theselection of Christian values individually rather than as a set is nonethelessunorthodox, and the guiding principle of Don Juan’s religious position is essentiallyan acknowledgement of agnosis, joined with an elective Idealism which takesChristianity as a vehicle. This allows for an idealised, romantic version of faith totranscend fallen practice. In the process, a particular devotion to the Virgin Mary isexpressed, possibly indicating a feeling held by the poet himself for a figure who isromanticised beyond fallibility or criticism.Notably, the romanticisation of religious feeling is coupled with a rejection ofphilosophical rationalism. This has a necessary consequence in regard to religion, inthat theology is religious philosophy. By validating religious feeling whilstdenigrating at least the accuracy of metaphysical thought, the poem turns away fromreligion as an epistemic exercise and an explanation of what is, towards religion as ananagogical exercise and a conception of what could be.168
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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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Our hearts first in the depths of L
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Since Kinnaird was not Murray, the
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His reference to their Christianity
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Juan lays claim. The claim of the s
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factor in all of them is the unlimi
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Further, in reasserting the role of
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common view of the proper role of a
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But though I am a temperate theolog
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I don’t pretend that I quite unde
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It is such incongruities between th
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(1.194.1546-7) for his interests, m
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You have freed the blacks - now pra
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as a moral warning to guard against
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Perpetual Virginity. At this point,
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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 140 and 141: accept more readily the inconclusiv
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 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
Page 190 and 191: Christian apologists nearly every t
Page 192 and 193: the description of the scene surrou
Page 194 and 195: On its table still beholdThe cup of
Page 196 and 197: Whereas the Turkish troops are bloo
Page 198 and 199: “conditional immortality”, in w
Page 200 and 201: The immortal virgins appear again i
Page 202 and 203: expression of it is, in part, merel
Page 204 and 205: This is a far more politic represen
Page 206 and 207: their much more limited value: toys
Page 208 and 209: unusual, or at all specific to his
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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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