A Pilgrim of Historiography: Byron and the Discourses of History in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain

A Pilgrim of Historiography – Ivan Pregnolato A Pilgrim of Historiography: Byron and the Discourses of History in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain Ivan Pregnolato, BA, MA Thesis Submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2015 Page 1 of 363 A Pilgrim of Historiography – Ivan Pregnolato Abstract This thesis aims to understand Byron’s œuvre in relation to the discourses of history in early nineteenth-century Britain. As a contribution to the historicist critical approaches of the past decades, my dissertation discusses the different ideas surrounding the concept of ‘history’ in the first two decades of the 1800s, a period marked by change. As shown, these discourses of history were notorious for their heterogeneity and, by analysing Byron’s poetry and letters, it becomes evident that Byron engaged with these multiple interpretations as well. Roughly, three types of discourses of history are discussed below: the classical knowledge which was perpetuated in the educational system of the time and discussed in travelogues; the whig interpretation of history and the teleological concept of ‘liberty’ through time; and the idea of powerful forces that act ‘behind’ history, such as economics and the inseparability of power embedded in creating historical narratives. This thesis concludes that is impossible to speak of a single Byronic historical narrative and, rather, argues that Byron’s texts espouse pluralistic conceptualisations of history. Page 2 of 363 A Pilgrim of Historiography – Ivan Pregnolato To my mother ‘A fila anda…’ Page 3 of 363 A Pilgrim of Historiography – Ivan Pregnolato Acknowledgements Several people have helped me in the years that it has taken to write this thesis. First of all, I would like to thank my parents, Ivo and Eusa, and sisters, Ive and Ivana, for their patience, understanding and support. Second of all, special thanks go to both my supervisors, Matt Green and Lynda Pratt, for their invaluable comments, revisions and suggestions throughout the many iterations of ‘Byron and the Discourses of History in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain’. I have met many incredible people in these past years in Nottingham and a thorough list would be impossible to achieve here. I am grateful to those which have had the (mis)fortune of having lived with me: Mark, Darren, Louise, Ben, Christiane and Paddy. I also thank Ed for letting me stay on his couch for two weeks one summer. I will always have special fond memories of the house in Station Road and those who I am privileged to have as friends and who were once my housemates: Paul, Sam, Colin and Bart. I am also indebted to those friends who also proofread the following pages: Dan, Louise, Rachael, Charlotte and Paul. This thesis is dedicated to the memory of my mother. Page 4 of 363 A Pilgrim of Historiography – Ivan Pregnolato Abbreviations CPW Lord Byron. The Complete Poetical Works, ed. by Jerome J. McGann, 7 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980-93) BLJ Byron's Letters and Journals: The Complete and Unexpurgated Text of All the Letters Available in Manuscript and the Full Printed Version of All Others, ed. by Leslie A. Marchand, 12 vols (London: John Murray, 1973-81) RSLPW Robert Southey: Later Poetical Works, 1811-1838, ed. by Tim Fulford, Lynda Pratt, Rachel Crawford, Carol Bolton, Diego Saglia, Ian Packer and Daniel E. White, 4 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto Publishers, 2012) DNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography <http://www.oxforddnb.com/> OED Oxford English Dictionary. OED Online <http://www.oed.com/> Page 5 of 363 A Pilgrim of Historiography – Ivan Pregnolato Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................... 8 The discourses of history ......................................................................................... 15 Historicist readings .................................................................................................. 23 1. The Classical Past ............................................................................................ 41 1.1 ‘[N]ought beneath the sun | Is new’: classical predominance .......................... 44 1.2 ‘[W]e search’d the classic page’: schools and universities ................................ 64 1.3 ‘[F]rom out the schoolboy’s vision’ ................................................................... 80 2. Travelling to the Past ...................................................................................... 92 2.1 Byron’s Grand Tour ............................................................................................ 96 2.2 Schoolboys amidst ruins .................................................................................. 107 2.3 The poet and the matter-of-fact scholar: Byron and Hobhouse ..................... 119 3. Inheriting the Past......................................................................................... 133 3.1 The classical inheritance .................................................................................. 134 3.2 ‘[W]e are not of those, who cannot distinguish between resistance and rebellion’ ................................................................................................................ 142 3.3 Contextualising whiggism: historical narrative and politics ............................ 158 4. (Re)interpreting the Recent Past .................................................................... 170 4.1 The Peninsular Wars: Whig attitudes to the conflict ....................................... 170 4.2 Anti-war rhetoric ............................................................................................. 183 4.3 The Siege of Izmail ........................................................................................... 203 5. ‘Behind’ the Past ........................................................................................... 226 5.1 The discourse of class and the ‘Jews and jobbers’ .......................................... 227 5.2 Cain and discourse ........................................................................................... 253 5.3 ‘[W]e learn the angels are all Tories’: The Vision of Judgment ....................... 285 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 314 Appendix .......................................................................................................... 329 Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 332 Page 6 of 363 A Pilgrim of Historiography – Ivan Pregnolato Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came, Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent; The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame Over his living head like Heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightning of his song In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue. (Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais¸ XXX)1 There, in a moment, we may plunge our years In fatal penitence, and in the blight Of our own soul, turn all our blood to tears, And colour things to come with hues of Night; The race of life becomes a hopeless flight To those that walk in darkness: on the sea, The boldest steer but where their ports invite, But there are wanderers o’er Eternity Whose bark drives on and on, and anchored ne’er shall be. (George Gordon Noel Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto III, LXX)2 1 Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poetical Works of Shelley, ed. by Thomas Hutchinson and corrected by G. M. Matthews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 438. 2 Lord Byron. The Complete Poetical Works, ed. by Jerome J. McGann, 7 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980-93), II, 103; 662-70. All quotations from Byron’s poetry, its annotations and editorial commentary are taken from McGann’s edition, henceforth referenced (CPW, volume, page(s); poem’s line number(s)). Page 7 of 363 A Pilgrim of Historiography – Ivan Pregnolato Introduction – The moment I could read – my grand passion was history – and why I know not. (‘My Dictionary’. 1 May 1821)1 This is how Byron, musing in his journal in Ravenna, 1821, writes about history. The study of the past was, in his words, the first and foremost passion since he had learnt to read. Since the rise to prominence of historically-oriented criticism of Byron’s life and works in the last three decades, much criticism has placed Byron in conjunction with ‘history’. It has not always been so. Criticism in the first half of the twentieth century was dominated by a more formalist line of thought and, consequently, tended to neglect historical contexts in favour of poetic aesthetics. Much as John Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1820), which implies that art in its transcendental aspects trumps lived historical experience, this critical tradition was inclined to pay closer attention to the words on the page and delve into the intricacies of certain themes in detriment to minute historical analyses. As Jerome J. McGann argues, Byron’s poetry cannot ‘be adequately interpreted without bringing a fair amount of historical and biographical information to bear’.2 As a result, Byron was mostly 1 Byron's Letters and Journals: The Complete and Unexpurgated Text of All the Letters Available in Manuscript and the Full Printed Version of All Others, ed. by Leslie A. Marchand, 12 vols (London: John Murray, 1973-81), VIII,

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