Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Corsair by Lord Byron The Corsair by Lord Byron. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 658ddae4c86fc40b • Your IP : 188.246.226.140 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. Anthology of Ideas. Byron, intentionally or unintentionally, weaves himself into his poetry stamping it with his entire persona. His characters are part of himself; the poems are pieces of his mind; the events are based on experience. Byron’s poetry is an amalgamation of all aspects of Byron. This is truer in some poems than others: some are nearly biographical and others skillfully manipulate other’s perceptions of Byron. His poetry reveals the inner workings of his mind . Because of this, the voices in Byron’s poetry are not just the voices of Byron’s characters: they are the intermingling of the poet with the poem. One of the most pervasive and recognizable aspects of Byronic poetry is the Byronic hero who is a manifestation of parts of Byron’s own personality and thoughts. Byron’s “The Corsair” introduces the most Byronic of Byron’s heroes: Conrad. He then proceeds to emasculate him and proposes Gulnare, a former sex slave, as an alternative hero. Through Conrad, Gulnare and the entirety of “The Corsair” Byron questions the status quo by using heroic couplets with a social parasite, reversing gender roles, and ignoring conventions. In doing so, it demonstrates the multitude of Byron’s voices ((Aside from the artistic uses of the multiple Byronic personae, they also seem to argue that he was, as believed, bi-polar. At times, his poetry seems less of an argument with others than an internal conversation he was having with himself. A conversation that the reader just happens to overhear. In “The Corsair,”​ one sees the various Byronic personae fighting for artistic dominance with none seemingly coming to the forefront.)) most exquisitely. Conrad is described very similarly to the way most would describe Byron: a man of few regrets and pleasures . He is seen by those closest to him as, “[t]hat man of loneliness and mystery, / Scarce seen to smile and seldom heard to sigh” (I.173-4). While Conrad is physically a normal man – “in [his] form seems little to admire,” – his persona demonstrates that something “more than marks the crowd of vulgar men,” and “[t]hough smooth his voice, and calm his general mien, / Still seems there something that [others] would not have seen” (I.195; I.200; I.206-7). Conrad is also described as being able to perceive into a person’s soul: “He had the skill […] to probe [ones] heart and watch [ones] changing cheek, At once the observer’s purpose to espy, and on himself roll back his scrutiny, Lest he to Conrad rather should betray Some secret thought…” (I.217-21). Byron is seemingly describing both Conrad and himself simultaneously. Conrad is more than just an outlaw fighting his personal chivalrous war against oppression, he is a part of Byron, and Byron attributes some of his most public personae to Conrad. Conrad is the most “Byronic” of the characters in the story, but the behaviors of other characters also illustrate the way Byron inserts himself into his art. The story of “The Corsair” easily could be seen as a traditional damsel-in-distress story but Byron twists this: Conrad is the poetical hero, but he does not conquer the evil he fights and his quest fails. Gulnare must kill Pasha Seyd and rescue the “hero.” Conrad would rather allow himself to die than to lose his chivalrous beliefs, so Gulnare must step in and perform the fatal act of murder. Byron presents Gulnare as a feminine mirror to Conrad. At first, she is passively and typically feminine, but in rescuing Conrad, she immediately shakes off the burdens of defined gender roles and becomes something more than just a damsel. In making up for Conrad’s inability to overcome his chivalrous absolutes, the more restrained he becomes the less she restrains herself. Byron could have reduced her role to that of a plot devise to allow Conrad to escape Pasha Seyd’s dungeon, but by allowing her to abandon her given place in life, she becomes the driving force of half the poem taking on an aspect that rivals Conrad’s own in importance. Conrad, for a moment, is almost the prop upon which Gulnare is allowed to grow. Her transformation from clichéd former damsel-in-distress enamored by her rescuer: “[I] long to view that chief again, / If I but to thank for, what my fear forgot, The life – my loving lord remember’d not!” to vengeful murderer “That hated tyrant […] he must bleed” illustrates her total change from feminine victim to something more (III. 270-3; III.319). This change does not illustrate any feminist sympathies on the part of Byron because in becoming something more, Gulnare emasculates Conrad and destroys her innocence: the “spot of blood, that light but guilty streak, Had banish’d all the beauty from her cheek” (III.426-7). However, even by raising a woman to the status of Byronic hero, Byron blurs the line of gender roles. His attitude toward women in general is seen plainly when he requires that Gulnare sacrifice her feminine soul as she attains a masculine superiority and in the fact that he allows her voice to reach a fevered pitch before silencing her; thus, placing her voice subservient to Conrad again. This is also demonstrated when Conrad rejects Gulnare after the murder seeing only, “Gulnare, the homicide!” ((An interesting note is that the rhyme of “homicide”​ with the word “bride”​ of the previous line forms the following couplet: “He thought on her afar, his lonely bride; He turn’d and saw Gulnare, the homicide!”​ Thus, it foreshadows his lonely bride’s death, and, in a way, placing the blame for her death on Gulnare and her relationship with Conrad. Symbolically, the death of Medora may represent the betrayal of Conrad’s spirit when he kisses Gulnare because Gulnare is his true match. Medora and he are in love but they are not really “made”​ for each other, and Gulnare is Conrad’s equal both mentally and physically.)) (III.463). Gulnare has emasculated him, so he rejects her seeing only the negative aspects of her even after he realizes that “she for him had given / Her all on earth, and more than all in heaven!” (III.529-30). Unlike Conrad, Gulnare is not specifically Byron; she is a powerful voice for a time, but not entirely that of the author himself. However, she could have been: as her personality shifts from feminine to masculine, her personality shifts towards that of Conrad, and thus, comes closer to Byron. The Byronic hero torch almost passes from Conrad to Gulnare with “Conrad following, at her beck, obeyd” (III. 448). The balance between the characters of Conrad and Gulnare come to its own conclusion as, “He clasp’d that hand – it trembled – and his own / Had lost its firmness, and his voice its tone.” (III.539-49). The shifting personalities had already blurred the two, and with that moment they physically merged as she “sunk into his embrace” (III. 544). The two personalities become one as Gulnare leaves the poem never to return. The shifting between the masculine and feminine reflects Byron’s own inability to fit his own identity within the narrow confines of European culture which required that his own impulses be subservient to a specifically masculine personae. The characters themselves are only one way that the Byronic personae infiltrates his poetry, he also uses the trappings of poetry to twist the meanings and intonations of the final product: his childe is not much of a pilgrim, his ode is more satiric than honorific. The final words of poetry demonstrate the finality of Conrad’s position: “His death yet dubious, deeds too widely known. […] Link’d with on virtue, and a thousand crimes” (694-6, III). However, the final words of “The Corsair” are not intoned by the narrator or Conrad, but by Byron himself in a footnote of nearly 2,000 words whose importance to the piece is negligible at best. By inserting generic and unimportant footnotes into emotionally charged scenes such as Medora’s plea for Conrad to remain with her, he can control the way the reader reacts. Through devices such as the introduction, epitaphs and footnotes, Byron inserts even more of himself, but he also asserts his control over the reader by leading them where he wishes them to go. The epitaphs are seemingly innocuous Latin quotes, but when one considers them in the context of the poem the epitaphs of “The greatest of all woes / Is to remind us of our happy days / In misery […]”, “So as his dim desires to recognize?”, “as thou seest, yet, yet it doth remain” for Cantos I, II, and III respectively take on new meanings that illuminate the events within. ((Epitaphs were translated by Byron in the poem “Francesca of Rimini”​ in lines (25-7), (24), and (9) respectively for Canto I, II, and III.)) The first epigraph clearly foretells that Canto I is to be considered the “happy days,” and highlights the coming doom. The third illustrates finality: there is no going back, but the second is a little less clear. If one takes dim to reference the clarity of Conrad’s desires, the second offers a muddle. What one desires should be clear, but for Conrad and Gulnare, it is not so. These three epitaphs set the emotional charge of the succeeding Canto, but they only do so after a second reading when their connotations are less “dim;” thus, simultaneously spoiling the story for the reader and asserting the creator’s superiority. Byron further manipulates the reader using conventions, especially in the form of verse he uses, but he wholly admits this in his introduction: I have attempted not the most difficult, but, perhaps, the best adapted measure to our language, the good old and now neglected heroic couplet. The stanza of Spenser is perhaps too slow and dignified for narrative…The heroic couplet is not the most popular measure certainly; but as I did not deviate into the other from a wish to flatter what is called public opinion, I shall quit it without further apology… As stated earlier, heroic couplets are almost entirely based on rhymes whose final syllables are stressed, and used solely for “heroes,” but Byron uses unstressed rhymes and uses heroic couplets not only for his vagabond corsair but also for his feminine heroine. While it could be true that these minor things do not illustrate anything more than Byron’s own artistic choices, combined with his disregard for most other conventions, one may see this as just another way for Byron to insert a little more of himself into his art. Byron’s art is entirely Byron, even when he mimics other poets, the poetry is infused with enough of Byron’s own personality that it is clearly his own work. The multitude of voices that are present within Byron’s poetry can be daunting, but as one reads they find that the voices all come from a single source: Byron. Either intentionally or unintentionally, Byron inserts his many personae into his poetry – sometimes they flow together undetectably and others they create confusion jarring the reader with the abrupt shifts. The characters and the events are so completely “Byron” that it is hard to resist drawing parallels to Byron’s own life because at times, the poem seems to illustrate Byron’s past and future . While we cannot assume that Byron intended this to be so, the mirroring of Byron’s personality and life with the lives and personalities of his characters evidences a far deeper connection between the two than that of creator and creation. The tragedy that affects the lives of all of the characters in “The Corsair” mirrors the constant tragedy that seemed to follow Byron throughout his life. Byron’s constant searching for happiness was simultaneously defeated by his own shortcomings and the confines of society just as the Corsair’s happiness was impossible because of his own shortcomings and those around him. Through these and other examples, one can see that the entirety of “The Corsair” and other poems are not just stories, but Byron speaking through his many personae which are all pieces of him, but none entirely so. John Murray in 1816. The course website of SFU's ENGL376, Fall 2016. The Corsair. The Corsair by Lord Byron. “The Corsair, A Tale.” is a narrative poem written by Lord Byron in verse and published by John Murray in 1814. Looking at the first edition of the “The Corsair” found at the special collections SFU Burnaby Bennett library, content of the book compromises of Half title page – full title page (Title / signed author / Epigraph / publisher / printer) – dedication to Thomas Moore – Corsair: A Tale (3 cantos) – and Notes. Unlike the sequel of “The Corsair” (“Lara, a tale”) , Lord Byron is the Signed author. John Murray first published Lara anonymously and had no “signed” authorship but the audience cognize elements like “travel and the Byronic hero” – (Deborah). Edges to protect from ware and usage. The outside physical description of the book is fairly simple and in good workable condition; it makes the readers focus more on the text and less on the nonverbal. The book is in Octavo format (8 leaves). Scant gilt sides and has decorative square marble-like front cover that cuts on the edges of the leather book to the simple spine, protecting it from ware and usage. The simple spine reads “The Corsair, A Tale.”. Examining the interior , Linguistic and non-linguistic codes carry meaning through the paratext, usage of white space, typography, and whether there are engravings/advertisements or not. This creates the embodiment of simplicity; making readers pay a closer look to the text itself. Full Title Page. The paratext situates the poem in a particular way (Levy) and interacts with the text by looking closer into the epigraphs, dedication, or the references in the notes. There are four Epigraphs in the poem. One in the title page by Torquato Tasso and one in the start of every canto by Dante Alighieri. The Epigraph in the title page is from “Jerusalem delivered”, an epic poem by the Italian poet Tasso about the first crusades to get Jerusalem back from its invaders; it’s interesting because it puts the story in motion and brings to mind Lord Byron’s personal military battles. In the start of every canto, he quotes Dante’s divine comedy “The Inferno” which is about the journey of Dante going through the nine stages (circles) of hell to get to the other side; metaphor for salvation and redemption. Dedication to Thomas Moore. On the other hand Byron “ Dedicates ” this oriental Turkish tale to Thomas Moore, and speaks of Milton’s blank verse, mentions Spenserian form to be “too slow and dignified for narrative”, and explains his usage of the heroic couplet in “The Corsair”. The second part of the dedication can be seen targeted to his audience or readers. Byron talks about his personage, conscience of the other and reception; he admits Child Harold to be a very “repulsive personage” and perhaps alluding himself in his tales “in general”. Lord Byron may feel judged by society for the characters “deeds and qualities” as his own, he may not care what others than his acquaintances think of the author being “better than the beings of his imagining”, nonetheless he finds “surprise” and “amusement” in such reactions. The usage of paper and white space is “lavish” in respect to their time and era. An example is the couple vacat pages in the beginning, using a half title page, and not having condensed texts (enough space between lines and new cantos start in the next page). Regarding the transparent Watermark in page 55, it reads “1813”, which is probably the year the sheet of paper was made (Levy). Epigraph ; White space ; Typography. Similarly, the choice of T ypography is fairly simple, no gothic (black-lettering such as the “Prisoner of Chillon and other poems”) or multiple kinds of fonts. There are No engravings, illustrations or advertisements (Lara, A Tale has an advertisement in the content) whatsoever inside “The Corsair”. There are no editorial margins or conclusions/notes after every canto, only the Notes in the end by the author himself (page 97 to 100) which explains some of the cultural references or differences; like for instance note 16 that explains a death custom in the Levant or note 12 that explains the length of the day in Greece or defining the term “Kiosk” in note 13 (a Turkish summer house). Remediating the text in its original form allows us as present-day readers to embody and experience what the book was like when it was first published in 1814. The book’s physical description (binding, typography, white space, paratext) is simple and straightforward, no fancy typographies or any illustrations/advertisements, thus focusing more on the tale and idea. Publishing such book did not require as much effort and cost as others with say fancy bindings, engravings or added illustration concepts. Published by John Murray in 1815, Revenant T.R Malthus work “Observations on the Corn Laws” last pages included advertisements and other books published by Murray with prices. “The Corsair” in seventh edition, one of the books advertised is charged at 5s.6d per piece , a fair and typical price for the work/publisher. Line 33 “‘Tis he-’tis Conrad-here-as wont-alone” is where The Pirate is first introduced. Conrad “The Corsair” tries to raid the Pasha, Seyd (High rank officer/chief) but gets seized (Line 801) and “fetter’d” (Line 972) while doing so – due to his vulnerability to the powerless women in the harem (House designed for concubines and wives). Conrad eventually gets freed by a female Heroine (Gulanre, the harem queen Line 829)) and runs away with him. Upon returning to his home island, Medora, his previous love who he left (Line 579) to raid his foe dies from grief. Elements of Byron is clear throughout the tale. Mediterranean Travels, Byronic and Oriental elements in the story are apparent. Orientalism is shown through the usage of Arabic/Turkish language (Pasha, Kiosk, Harem,etc..) and muslim components such as Alla, Moslems, Haram, “Mecca’s dome” (Line 737), “Dervish” (Line 765), and the “Sultan’s throne” (Line 734). Gulnare can be seen as the “Byronic Heroine” here by portraying the contrary of a harem queen and revolting against the Pasha. “Proud Conrad” (Line 930) is an outlaw with a weakness to females and both him and Gulnare are generally rebellious in nature. The work is representative of the year and the romantic theme with the ending being “sublime” and other elements like John Murray Publishing, Thomas Moore dedication, Byronic Hero (or Heroine) and Travel. Byron, George Gordon. “ The Corsair, A Tale” . London: John Murray, 1814. Print. Levy, Michelle. “S pecial Collections visit ” English 376 Seminars. Simon Fraser University. Vancouver. 19 Oct. 2016. Seminar. Malthus, T. R. “ Observations On The Effects Of The Corn Laws” . London: J. Murray, 1815. Print. Extract from The Corsair by Byron. ‘If I have deviated into the gloomy vanity of “drawing from self,”’ Lord George Byron wrote in the dedication to The Corsair , ‘the pictures are probably like, since they are unfavourable’. The Corsair , published in 1814, tells the story of Conrad, a wild and ruthless Aegean pirate whose only virtue is the love he feels for the gentle Medora. There is nothing remarkable about his appearance, Byron tells us, but beneath the quiet exterior there is passion, pride and a defiant, calculated callousness, characteristics that set him apart from other men. Brutalised by childhood ill-treatment, detested and feared, Conrad is a lonely tragic hero who is destined never to enjoy peace or happiness. The Corsair was an immediate success, confirming Byron’s importance as the most popular and influential poet of his generation. How does this work relate to the Brontës? The young Brontës were familiar with the life and work of Byron from literary magazines and the collected or cheap editions in their father’s library. Despite its reputation for immorality, they were avid readers of Byron’s poetry, and in 1834 Charlotte recommended her friend Ellen Nussey to omit Don Juan and perhaps Cain but to ‘read the rest fearlessly’. Their enthusiasm for Byron’s work is most obvious in the Brontës’ juvenilia, the stories they wrote together as children, especially in the Angrian tales of Charlotte and Branwell and the Gondal saga of Emily and Anne, but Rochester and Heathcliff bear many characteristics of the Byronic hero. Both are outsiders, doomed by character or circumstance to despair and isolation. Rochester is reprieved at the end of the novel, but Heathcliff remains ‘like the Corsair,‘ as one contemporary critic wrote in The Examiner , ‘linked to one virtue and a thousand crimes’. Lord Byron. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Lord Byron , in full George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron , (born January 22, 1788, London, England—died April 19, 1824, Missolonghi, Greece), British Romantic poet and satirist whose poetry and personality captured the imagination of Europe. Renowned as the “gloomy egoist” of his autobiographical poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18) in the 19th century, he is now more generally esteemed for the satiric realism of Don Juan (1819–24). Why is Lord Byron significant? Lord Byron was a British Romantic poet and satirist whose poetry and personality captured the imagination of Europe. Although made famous by the autobiographical poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18)—and his many love affairs—he is perhaps better known today for the satiric realism of Don Juan (1819–24). What was Lord Byron’s early life like? George Gordon Byron was born in 1788, the son of British Capt. John (“Mad Jack”) Byron and Catherine Gordon, a Scottish heiress. After John squandered most of her fortune, she and her son lived on a meagre income in Scotland. In 1789 George unexpectedly inherited the title and estates of his great-uncle. What was Lord Byron like? Although handsome, Lord Byron was born with a clubfoot that made him sensitive about his appearance all his life. However, this did not stop him from having numerous affairs with men and women, and his lovers allegedly included his half-sister. Adventurous, he frequently traveled, and he was unconventional; he had a pet bear at college. How did Lord Byron die? Aiding the Greeks in their struggle for independence from Turkish rule, Lord Byron took command of a brigade of Souliot soldiers in early 1824. However, he was weakened by serious illness in February and contracted a fever in April, likely worsened by bloodletting, a then-common treatment. Byron died on April 19 at age 36. Life and career. Byron was the son of the handsome and profligate Captain John (“Mad Jack”) Byron and his second wife, Catherine Gordon, a Scots heiress. After her husband had squandered most of her fortune, Mrs. Byron took her infant son to Aberdeen, Scotland, where they lived in lodgings on a meagre income; the captain died in France in 1791. George Gordon Byron had been born with a clubfoot and early developed an extreme sensitivity to his lameness. In 1798, at age 10, he unexpectedly inherited the title and estates of his great-uncle William, the 5th Baron Byron. His mother proudly took him to England, where the boy fell in love with the ghostly halls and spacious ruins of Newstead Abbey, which had been presented to the Byrons by Henry VIII. After living at Newstead for a while, Byron was sent to school in London, and in 1801 he went to Harrow, one of England’s most prestigious schools. In 1803 he fell in love with his distant cousin, Mary Chaworth, who was older and already engaged, and when she rejected him she became the symbol for Byron of idealized and unattainable love. He probably met Augusta Byron, his half sister from his father’s first marriage, that same year. In 1805 Byron entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he piled up debts at an alarming rate and indulged in the conventional vices of undergraduates there. The signs of his incipient sexual ambivalence became more pronounced in what he later described as “a violent, though pure , love and passion” for a young chorister, John Edleston. Alongside Byron’s strong attachment to boys, often idealized as in the case of Edleston, his attachment to women throughout his life is an indication of the strength of his heterosexual drive. In 1806 Byron had his early poems privately printed in a volume entitled Fugitive Pieces , and that same year he formed at Trinity what was to be a close, lifelong friendship with John Cam Hobhouse, who stirred his interest in liberal Whiggism. Byron’s first published volume of poetry, Hours of Idleness , appeared in 1807. A sarcastic critique of the book in The Edinburgh Review provoked his retaliation in 1809 with a couplet satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers , in which he attacked the contemporary literary scene. This work gained him his first recognition. On reaching his majority in 1809, Byron took his seat in the House of Lords, and then embarked with Hobhouse on a grand tour. They sailed to Lisbon, crossed Spain, and proceeded by Gibraltar and Malta to Greece, where they ventured inland to Ioánnina and to Tepelene in Albania. In Greece Byron began Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage , which he continued in Athens. In March 1810 he sailed with Hobhouse for Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), visited the site of Troy, and swam the Hellespont (present-day Dardanelles) in imitation of Leander. Byron’s sojourn in Greece made a lasting impression on him. The Greeks’ free and open frankness contrasted strongly with English reserve and hypocrisy and served to broaden his views of men and manners. He delighted in the sunshine and the moral tolerance of the people. Byron arrived back in London in July 1811, and his mother died before he could reach her at Newstead. In February 1812 he made his first speech in the House of Lords, a humanitarian plea opposing harsh Tory measures against riotous Nottingham weavers. At the beginning of March, the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage were published by John Murray, and Byron “woke to find himself famous.” The poem describes the travels and reflections of a young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands. Besides furnishing a travelogue of Byron’s own wanderings through the Mediterranean, the first two cantos express the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. In the poem Byron reflects upon the vanity of ambition, the transitory nature of pleasure, and the futility of the search for perfection in the course of a “pilgrimage” through Portugal, Spain, Albania, and Greece. In the wake of Childe Harold ’s enormous popularity, Byron was lionized in Whig society. The handsome poet was swept into a liaison with the passionate and eccentric Lady Caroline Lamb, and the scandal of an elopement was barely prevented by his friend Hobhouse. She was succeeded as his lover by Lady Oxford, who encouraged Byron’s radicalism. During the summer of 1813, Byron apparently entered into intimate relations with his half sister Augusta, now married to Colonel George Leigh. He then carried on a flirtation with Lady Frances Webster as a diversion from this dangerous liaison. The agitations of these two love affairs and the sense of mingled guilt and exultation they aroused in Byron are reflected in the series of gloomy and remorseful Oriental verse tales he wrote at this time: The Giaour (1813); The Bride of Abydos (1813); The Corsair (1814), which sold 10,000 copies on the day of publication; and Lara (1814). Seeking to escape his love affairs in marriage, Byron proposed in September 1814 to Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke. The marriage took place in January 1815, and Lady Byron gave birth to a daughter, Augusta Ada, in December 1815. From the start the marriage was doomed by the gulf between Byron and his unimaginative and humorless wife; and in January 1816 Annabella left Byron to live with her parents, amid swirling rumours centring on his relations with Augusta Leigh and his bisexuality. The couple obtained a legal separation. Wounded by the general moral indignation directed at him, Byron went abroad in April 1816, never to return to England. Byron sailed up the Rhine River into Switzerland and settled at Geneva, near Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Godwin (soon to be Mary Shelley), who had eloped and were living with Claire Clairmont, Godwin’s half sister. (Byron had begun an affair with Clairmont in England.) In Geneva he wrote the third canto of Childe Harold (1816), which follows Harold from Belgium up the Rhine River to Switzerland. It memorably evokes the historical associations of each place Harold visits, giving pictures of the Battle of Waterloo (whose site Byron visited), of Napoleon and Jean- Jacques Rousseau, and of the Swiss mountains and lakes, in verse that expresses both the most aspiring and most melancholy moods. A visit to the Bernese Oberland provided the scenery for the Faustian poetic drama Manfred (1817), whose protagonist reflects Byron’s own brooding sense of guilt and the wider frustrations of the Romantic spirit doomed by the reflection that man is “half dust, half deity, alike unfit to sink or soar.” At the end of the summer the Shelley party left for England, where Clairmont gave birth to Byron’s daughter Allegra in January 1817. In October Byron and Hobhouse departed for Italy. They stopped in Venice, where Byron enjoyed the relaxed customs and morals of the Italians and carried on a love affair with Marianna Segati, his landlord’s wife. In May he joined Hobhouse in Rome, gathering impressions that he recorded in a fourth canto of Childe Harold (1818). He also wrote Beppo , a poem in ottava rima that satirically contrasts Italian with English manners in the story of a Venetian menage-à-trois. Back in Venice, Margarita Cogni, a baker’s wife, replaced Segati as his mistress, and his descriptions of the vagaries of this “gentle tigress” are among the most entertaining passages in his letters describing life in Italy. The sale of Newstead Abbey in the autumn of 1818 for £94,500 cleared Byron of his debts, which had risen to £34,000, and left him with a generous income. In the light, mock-heroic style of Beppo Byron found the form in which he would write his greatest poem, Don Juan , a satire in the form of a picaresque verse tale. The first two cantos of Don Juan were begun in 1818 and published in July 1819. Byron transformed the legendary libertine Don Juan into an unsophisticated, innocent young man who, though he delightedly succumbs to the beautiful women who pursue him, remains a rational norm against which to view the absurdities and irrationalities of the world. Upon being sent abroad by his mother from his native Sevilla (Seville), Juan survives a shipwreck en route and is cast up on a Greek island, whence he is sold into slavery in Constantinople. He escapes to the Russian army, participates gallantly in the Russians’ siege of Ismail, and is sent to St. Petersburg, where he wins the favour of the empress Catherine the Great and is sent by her on a diplomatic mission to England. The poem’s story, however, remains merely a peg on which Byron could hang a witty and satirical social commentary. His most consistent targets are, first, the hypocrisy and cant underlying various social and sexual conventions, and, second, the vain ambitions and pretenses of poets, lovers, generals, rulers, and humanity in general. Don Juan remains unfinished; Byron completed 16 cantos and had begun the 17th before his own illness and death. In Don Juan he was able to free himself from the excessive melancholy of Childe Harold and reveal other sides of his character and personality—his satiric wit and his unique view of the comic rather than the tragic discrepancy between reality and appearance. Shelley and other visitors in 1818 found Byron grown fat, with hair long and turning gray, looking older than his years, and sunk in sexual promiscuity. But a chance meeting with Countess Teresa Gamba Guiccioli, who was only 19 years old and married to a man nearly three times her age, reenergized Byron and changed the course of his life. Byron followed her to Ravenna, and she later accompanied him back to Venice. Byron returned to Ravenna in January 1820 as her cavalier servente (gentleman-in-waiting) and won the friendship of her father and brother, Counts Ruggero and Pietro Gamba, who initiated him into the secret society of the Carbonari and its revolutionary aims to free Italy from Austrian rule. In Ravenna Byron wrote The Prophecy of Dante ; cantos III, IV, and V of Don Juan ; the poetic dramas Marino Faliero , Sardanapalus , The Two Foscari , and Cain (all published in 1821); and a satire on the poet Robert Southey, The Vision of Judgment , which contains a devastating parody of that poet laureate’s fulsome eulogy of King George III. Byron arrived in Pisa in November 1821, having followed Teresa and the Counts Gamba there after the latter had been expelled from Ravenna for taking part in an abortive uprising. He left his daughter Allegra, who had been sent to him by her mother, to be educated in a convent near Ravenna, where she died the following April. In Pisa Byron again became associated with Shelley, and in early summer of 1822 Byron went to Leghorn (Livorno), where he rented a villa not far from the sea. There in July the poet and essayist Leigh Hunt arrived from England to help Shelley and Byron edit a radical journal, The Liberal . Byron returned to Pisa and housed Hunt and his family in his villa. Despite the drowning of Shelley on July 8, the periodical went forward, and its first number contained The Vision of Judgment . At the end of September Byron moved to Genoa, where Teresa’s family had found asylum. Byron’s interest in the periodical gradually waned, but he continued to support Hunt and to give manuscripts to The Liberal . After a quarrel with his publisher, John Murray, Byron gave all his later work, including cantos VI to XVI of Don Juan (1823–24), to Leigh Hunt’s brother John, publisher of The Liberal . By this time Byron was in search of new adventure. In April 1823 he agreed to act as agent of the London Committee, which had been formed to aid the Greeks in their struggle for independence from Turkish rule. In July 1823 Byron left Genoa for Cephalonia. He sent £4,000 of his own money to prepare the Greek fleet for sea service and then sailed for Missolonghi on December 29 to join Prince Aléxandros Mavrokordátos, leader of the forces in western Greece. Byron made efforts to unite the various Greek factions and took personal command of a brigade of Souliot soldiers, reputedly the bravest of the Greeks. But a serious illness in February 1824 weakened him, and in April he contracted the fever from which he died at Missolonghi on April 19. Deeply mourned, he became a symbol of disinterested patriotism and a Greek national hero. His body was brought back to England and, refused burial in Westminster Abbey, was placed in the family vault near Newstead. Ironically, 145 years after his death, a memorial to Byron was finally placed on the floor of the Abbey.