LORD BYRON AND THE COSMOPOLITAN IMAGINATION, 1795-1824 By Michael P. Steier A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Fall 2011 Copyright 2011 Michael P. Steier All Rights Reserved LORD BYRON AND THE COSMOPOLITAN IMAGINATION, 1795-1824 by Michael P. Steier Approved: ___________________________________________________________ Iain Crawford, Ph.D. Chairperson of the Department of English Approved: ___________________________________________________________ George H. Watson, Ph.D. Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Approved: ___________________________________________________________ Charles G. Riordan, Ph.D. Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional Education I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: ___________________________________________________________ Charles E. Robinson, Ph.D. Professor in charge of dissertation I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: ___________________________________________________________ Carl M. Dawson, Ph.D. Member of Dissertation Committee I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: ___________________________________________________________ Peter W. Graham, Ph.D. Member of Dissertation Committee I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: ___________________________________________________________ Kevin Kerrane, Ph.D. Member of Dissertation Committee ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to Professor Charles Robinson for his advice and support over the years. He read and commented on many different versions of this project, and it never would have reached completion without his guidance. I especially want to thank him for being such an inspiring teacher and scholar, and, of course, for introducing me to Lord Byron and the Romantics. I extend my gratitude to my dissertation committee for supporting this project. Professor Carl Dawson has been a perennial source of advice and guidance. His seminars on nineteenth-century British literature helped expand my understanding of Romanticism, and they remain among the most memorable courses I had the pleasure of taking. Professor (and fellow “Hokie”) Peter Graham has had a significant impact on my research. His work on Byronic cosmopolitanism inspired much of the thinking that went into this project. I am also grateful to Professor Graham and the Byron Society of America for supporting my research at International Byron Society conferences in Ireland and Scotland. Professor Kevin Kerrane has been a long-time friend and mentor, whose professionalism and teaching I admire and hope to emulate. I am especially grateful to Professor Kerrane for agreeing to read and comment on this dissertation on short notice. I give special thanks to Professor Donald Reiman and the Carl and Lily Phorzheimer Foundation for supporting my graduate study with two research iv assistantships. The many important lessons in textual scholarship that Professor Reiman taught me have had a significant impact on my approach to literary research. I am grateful to Professor Reiman for his willingness to read and comment on early versions of this project. The English Department at the University of Delaware deserves much of my gratitude for the various fellowships, travel grants, and research awards that allowed me to complete this project. My family and colleagues have also had an important role to play in supporting the dissertation. Paul Yeoh, Michael Edson, Jeremy Trucker, Joe Turner, and Robert Clarke all stimulated my thinking and helped keep my sanity in check. I especially thank my mother, father, brother, and grandmother for supporting me year after year. I could not have finished this project without their love and support. Finally, I want to thank Kathleen Mallon for supporting me throughout the many stages of writing (and talking about writing) the dissertation. She made it all worthwhile, and I dedicate this to her. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………...….........vii Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION: LORD BYRON AND THE COSMOPOLITAN IMAGINATION, 1795-1824…………………………………..……...1 2 TRANSGRESSING THE BORDERS: ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS………………....…27 3 TOWARDS AN INTERNATIONAL STANDARD: HINTS FROM HORACE IN 1811………………………………..….56 4 BECOMING A “CITIZEN OF THE WORLD”: CHILDE HAROLD II AND THE CURSE OF MINERVA………..….80 5 BARDIC COSMOPOLITANISM: CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE……………………………….112 6 CYNICAL COSMOPOLITANISM: DON JUAN AND THE AGE OF BRONZE…………………..….…148 Epilogue NATIONAL POETS OF MANKIND: BYRON AND POPE…………………………………………...…..177 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………..…194 vi ABSTRACT Following George Gordon, Lord Byron across Britain, Europe, and the Eastern Mediterranean, "Lord Byron and the Cosmopolitan Imagination, 1795-1824" traces Byron's cosmopolitanism to its foundations in Greek Cynical philosophy and to its founder, Diogenes, Byron's self-confessed mentor. The Cynics are commonly regarded as the first cosmopolitans; yet the cosmopolitanism they practiced is quite different from the cosmopolitanism we value today. Instead of stressing a need for social progress and global interconnectedness, the Cynics chose to live outside of society, challenging its conventions and declaring themselves to be citizens of the cosmos. I argue that Byron followed Cynical ideas closely and, as a Cynical cosmopolitan, rejected the theories of cultural unity and social progress that had become popular during the Enlightenment. My first two chapters, which focus on Byron and Anglo-Scottish relations, chart the development of Byron's internationalism in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers and Hints from Horace, two early neoclassical satires rarely studied as cosmopolitan texts. The next two chapters, which focus on Byron's travels in Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, explore the limits of universal cosmopolitanism in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Byron's first poem explicitly to adopt a Cynical philosophy. My last chapter focuses on Byron's later years when he internalized the principles of Cynical philosophy in Don Juan and vii The Age of Bronze. The conclusion brings the full scope of Byron's cosmopolitan into focus by examining the urbane rhetoric of the prose writings he prepared in defense of Alexander Pope in 1820 and 1821. viii Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION: LORD BYRON AND THE COSMOPOLITAN IMAGINATION, 1795-1824 In 1760, Oliver Goldsmith began publishing a series of fictitious letters in the Public Ledger that would later serve as the basis for his epistolary novel, The Citizen of the World (1762). The letters are written by a Chinese traveler named Lien Chi Altangi who doubles as Goldsmith‘s own philosophical mouthpiece for international relations.1 In his second letter from London, the traveler reflects on the virtues of all the cosmopolitans who have come before him: I honor all those great names who endeavored to unite the world by their travels; such men grow wiser as well as better the farther they departed from home, and seemed like rivers, whose streams are not only increased, but refined, as they travel from their source.2 Lord Byron, who has long been styled a ―Cosmopolitan‖ and a ―World Poet,‖ would seem to fit Altangi‘s description of a ―great‖ citizen.3 Byron traveled much of Europe 1 A Companion to British Literature, 1:214. 2 Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World, 1:24. 3 Beatty, 106. 1 and the Eastern Mediterranean, desired to visit North and South America, and familiarized himself with the social and political conditions of all the cultures he encountered. Among his many travels, Byron‘s second and final journey to Greece in 1823, when he joined other European philhellenes in supporting the Greek Revolution, has more than anything else established his reputation as a ―Cosmopolite‖ who, in Samuel Johnson‘s sense of the word, had a ―home in every place.‖4 Monuments honoring Byron and his commitment to the Greek cause can be found throughout Greece today, and yearly academic conferences across Europe and North America sponsored by The International Byron Society continue to reinforce his status as an international poet who, in the words of Altangi, has succeeded in ―unit[ing] the world.‖ Byron, however, would have mocked such a notion as idealistic and dismissed Altangi for his belief in a virtuous and unifying cosmopolitanism. In the eleventh canto of Don Juan, when Juan arrives friendless in London after traveling across Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean, Byron says as much, comparing the empty wisdom he has gained from his world travels to the empty wisdom Diogenes the Cynic found during his life‘s journey: But London‘s so well lit, that if Diogenes Could recommence to hunt his honest man, And found him not amidst the various progenies 4 Dictionary, 143. 2 Of this enormous city‘s spreading spawn, ‗Twere not for want of lamps to aid his dodging his Yet undiscovered treasure. What I can, I‘ve