https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ Theses Digitisation: https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/research/enlighten/theses/digitisation/ This is a digitised version of the original print thesis. Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] BYRON: MODES OF MODERNITY. A STUDY OF ALLUSION AND DIGRESSION by Susan Jane Stabler Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow Department of English Literature August 1995 © Susan Jane Stabler 1995 ProQuest Number: 10391330 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10391330 Published by ProQuest LLO (2017). C o pyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code Microform Edition © ProQuest LLO. ProQuest LLO. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.Q. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 - 1346 i t , . l o i ^ o ABSTRACT The thesis takes as its starting point an exploration and assessment of critical responses to sudden transitions of tone and juxtapositions of register in Byron^s work. A survey of the reception of Byron's poetry and prose 1812- 1830 establishes that juxtaposition was recognised as a feature of Byron's writing well before the publication of the ottava rima poems. Juxtaposition is identified as a moment which generates digression and the thesis focuses on the relationship between digression and Byron's differing modes of ahusion to other texts. The study examines the materiality of Byron's poetry in relation to eighteenth-century examples of self-reflexive narrative, digression and parodie quotation in verse, novels, and dramatic writing. In particular, the influence of the writing and receptions of Laurence Sterne and Charles Churchill are discussed, together with Byron's experience of dramatic prologues to eighteenth-century comedies. The thesis concentrates on Byron's experiments with the genre of satire, paying close attention to the way prose notes punctuate Byron's verse compositions. Detailed analyses of parenthetical asides and signalled allusions in Byron's early verse (1806-1811), Hints from Horace (1811 and 1820-21), and Don Jiian Cantos Vl-XVH (1822-24) suggest ways in which Byron's allusive play with other texts is inflected by dialogue with his changing public reception and the relationship with his publisher John Murray, and friend John Cam Hobhouse. Exploration of the literary texture of Don Jtian reveals complex shifting patterns of Shakespearean allusion; and figures of contingency within the poem are related to the reader's role in constructing and responding to digression. As well as close reading of the published work, the thesis draws on unpublished correspondence between Murray and Byron and archive research into Byron's use of the Parisian newspaper Galignani's Messenger and Galignani's I "'U Literary Gazette. The thesis suggests that in Byron's ottava rima work digressive allusions create a mode of intertextuality which we recognise as anticipating modernist and postmodernist poetics of indeterminacy. The theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva, and Roland Barthes offer approaches to the texture of digressive allusion: the thesis draws on these theories and concludes that an historicized reading of form may provide a way of negotiating our recognition of similarities and differences between Hterary texts. .-Î 1;:.'r ! TABLE OF CONTENTS Î 1 Preface i 4 Acknowledgements ix List of Abbreviations xi ■'9 Notes on Texts xii 1 Chapter One: 'Scorching and Drenching' 1 1 1 1.1: Byron and Canons of Correctness 1 $ 1.2: Critical Reactions to Childe Harold's Pilgiimage I and II 6 ,,, 1.3: Critical Reactions to the Oriental Tales 22 'Î 1.4: Critical Reactions to Byron 1816-17 36 1.5: Ottava Rima and English Wit 41 1 1.6: Critical Responses to Don jtian 53 ‘,2: 1.7: Critical Responses to Byron as a Cockney 64 a Chapter Two: Forms of Digression 69 't 2.1: Byron's Early Poetry 1806-1812 69 :4 2.2: Digression as Literary Trope 77 4' 2.3: Parenthetical Addresses 81 : 2.4: Byron and Charles Churchill 100 2.5: Byron, Sterne, and Satirised Sentiment 113 :S 2.6: Allusion and the Theatre 122 2 2.7: Allusion in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers 135 1 I Chapter Three: Hints of Intertextuality 145 ■■■:: 3.1: The Reception of Horace 145 3.2: The First Hints from Horace (1811) 148 3.3: The Return to Hints from Horace (1820) 167 Ï 3.4: The Inflection of Hints from Horace 184 3.5: Hints from Horace and Don Juan 188 i 3.6: The Art of the 'Superartificial' 197 •1■ ■tii Chapter Four: Uncertain Blisses 202 4.1: Modes of Digressive Allusion 202 4.2: Shakespeare in Don Juan 213 4.3: The Keats-SheUey Corpus in Don Juan Canto VIII 232 4.4: Risk and Return in Don Juan 253 Chapter Five: The Labyrinth of External Objects' 274 5.1: Macbeth in Don Juan Cantos IX, X, and XI 274 5.2: Galignani's Messenger and Don Juan 288 5.3: Don Juan and 'Feminine Caprice' 304 5.4: Sexual Landscapes and Female Voyages in Don Juan 320 5.5: Childe Adeline 331 5.6: The Ceography of Digression 340 Chapter Six and Conclusion: Byron's Modes of Modernity 346 Appendices A. Harmony and Variation 361 B. Satire 374 C. A Note on Beattie's 'Essay On Laughter...’ 378 D. Taste 381 E. Statistical Tabulation of Digressive Allusion in Don Juan 386 Bibhography 387 1. Manuscript Material 387 2. Primary Sources 388 3. Secondary Sources 393 ï PREFACE Like so many beginnings, formally a Preface, this is in fact an i Afterword. In my original proposal for this thesis I intended to trace Byron's forms of textual disruption through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and thereby to analyse Byron's influence on modernist literature in English. This initial study had assumptions about the stability of form built into it. As the research progressed, 1 discovered that it was not possible to discuss the recurrence of poetic figures in a purely formal way: what looks at first Eke the repetition of a literary trope in effect acquires a different meaning contingent on its new historical context. My research began with an examination of Byron's contemporary reviews and focused on the way Byron's writing was perceived by readers to disturb by its sudden turns and transitions. This instability was not only identified with the later, ottava rima verse as 1 had expected; instead I found that it was detected in the first two cantos of Childe Harold where Byron's satiric interpolations and whimsical prose notes were condemned for disrupting the harmony required of poetic composition. 1 have called this early nineteenth-century trope of instability digressive allusion. Although 1 characterise it as a figure of contingency 1 would argue that it can help us to define specific ways of approaching the issue of textual relations. In the course of its development, this study of digressive allusion in Byron's poetry has discovered the need for a methodology of historicized form to negotiate the differences between texts. On 28 April 1992, in the early stages of my work, 1 visited the John Murray Archive at 50 Albemarle Street, London. 1 wanted to consult the .Î4 u letter from John Murray to Byron relaying Francis Cohen's criticism that Don Juan 'drenched & scorched at the same instant', t I also wanted to inspect the manuscript of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Cantos I and 11 to see if the satirical verse or prose interruptions were indeed part of the dynamic of composition. Two moments from that day exerted differing (arguably contradictory) pressures on the way the thesis evolved. As 1 sat in a book- lined alcove off the main entrance hall, Murray's doorman assured me that Lady Caroline Lamb had waited in exactly the same place for a glimpse of Lord Byron. The second moment was an instant of uncanny recognition when it became possible for me to trace the influence of Byron's manuscript prose notes in the fabric of his verse composition. Responding to these two impulses, the thesis began to employ a combination of methods of close reading and contextual discussion. 1 decided to approach Byron's modes of textual instability by analysing the effects of juxtaposition, digression, parodie quotation and satirical prose notes within individual works by Byron and in relation to other literary texts and wider cultural and historical events. The thesis concentrates on Byron's satirical poetry 1806-1823 but within these dates is not all-inclusive.2 From an examination of his early poetry, juxtapositions of genre and tone emerged as moments which generated Byronic digression. My first chapter examines the extent to which juxtaposed and digressive elements in Byron's work met with hostile criticism.