"The Age of Oddities": Byronism and the Fictional Representations of Byron

 
 
 
 

"The Age of Oddities": Byronism and the Fictional Representations of Byron

Show simple item record


dc.contributor.advisor Sadoff, Dianne F. en_US
dc.contributor.author Davis, G. Todd en_US
dc.date.accessioned 2008-07-10T17:06:20Z
dc.date.available 2008-07-10T17:06:20Z
dc.date.created 2003 en_US
dc.date.issued 2008-07-10T17:06:20Z
dc.identifier.uri http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1070042896 en_US
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/2374.OX/18336
dc.description "'The Age of Oddities': Byronism and the Fictional Representations of Byron," examines the perpetuation of the Byron legend as a process of mythologizing by both Byron and later authors who alter, expand, or moderate this discourse. The dissertation examines not only the Byronic figure's constructedness but also how synchronic representations engender a literary history. Chapter 1 investigates how Byron's self-fashioning deflects a rabidly curious audience's awareness away from the poet to his performance and draws readerly attention to, as Judith Butler would say, a stylized repetition of acts. Chapter 2 examines how Hans Robert Jauss's horizons of experience and expectation and exploration of the author/text/audience triangle produce an historically emergent model for how these fictional representations proliferate. It then focuses on reception theory to explicate the construction and recurrence of the Byronic vampire, showing how the Gothic genre was altered and expanded by subsequent refigurings of vampiric representation by such authors as John Polidori, Miranda Seymour, and Tom Holland. Chapter 3 explores how Butler's performativity explains Byron's performances and poses, which appear as illusions based upon ostensibly stable identities. It then moves into the paranormal and the scientific realms, in which Byron becomes refashioned both as a supernatural entity, whose psychic exile from corporeal boundaries evokes images of the wandering ghost, and a disembodied spirit captured in a technological matrix and personified as a cyborg. Chapter 4 draws upon Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics to explicate Byron's interstitial position between sanity and madness, elucidating the identificatory myth that seduces subsequent authors and critics. Consequently, it examines how such authors as Lady Caroline Lamb and Percy Bysshe Shelley become ensnared in the interpretive circle, unable to see beyond Byron's pretense of madness, mistaking it for truth. en_US
dc.format application/pdf en_US
dc.format 230p. en_US
dc.rights unrestricted en_US
dc.rights Copyright and permissions information available at the source archive en_US
dc.subject Lord Byron en_US
dc.subject Byronism en_US
dc.subject Byronic Fictions en_US
dc.subject Reception Theory en_US
dc.subject Performativity en_US
dc.subject Hermeneutics. en_US
dc.title "The Age of Oddities": Byronism and the Fictional Representations of Byron en_US
dc.type Electronic Thesis or Dissertation en_US
dc.degree.name PhD en_US
dc.degree.level doctoral en_US
dc.degree.discipline English en_US
dc.degree.grantor Miami University en_US
dc.contributor.publisher Miami University / OhioLINK en_US

Files in this item

Files Size Format View

There are no files associated with this item.

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record