Susan Oliver's innovative study explores Scott's and Byron's poetical engagements with borders, actual and metaphorical, and with the people living on and around them. These influential poets' fascination with the 'strangeness' of social structures and with cultural difference is illumined through comparative readings of Scott's collected ballads and narrative poetry, together with Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, his Eastern Tales and his late, utopian South-Sea poem The Island. Discussion of a prolific range of literary, intellectual, and sociological influences emphasizes the enlightenment background to early-nineteenth-century anxieties over cultural instability arising from revolution, war and social change. Exemplary readings show how Scott addressed radical and anti-radical activity in Britain, along with fears of invasion, through his representations of older, feudal and clan systems, and how Byron responded within poetic figurations of contested boundaries from southern Europe and North Africa, through the Near East and beyond. Intriguing exegeses and assiduous scholarship make this a compelling book for academics and the interested, general reader.
Winner of the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize. For more information see the prize's website: http://www.britac.ac.uk/misc/medals/crawshay.html
'Susan Oliver has written a very fine book on the poetry of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron which puts to compelling use the concept of the border as a geographical, political and metaphorical site of 'Cultural encounter'...Oliver's chapters on Scott and Byron are written with a level of clarity, conviction and energy which makes them a pleasure to read.' - Paul M. Curtis, Romanticism
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
List of Maps
Introduction: North, South, East-and West: The Strangeness of 'Debateable Lands'
Collecting Ballads and Resisting Radical Energies: Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
Scott's Narrative Poetry: The Borders and the Highland Margins
Crossing 'Dark Barriers': Byron, Europe and the Near East in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Cantos 1 and 2
Byron's Eastern Tales: Eastern Themes and Contexts
Bibliography
Index
SUSAN OLIVER is a Senior Member of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge and Visiting Fellow at the University of Essex. From September 2007 she will be Lecturer in Long-Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Salford, UK.
Description
Susan Oliver's innovative study explores Scott's and Byron's poetical engagements with borders, actual and metaphorical, and with the people living on and around them. These influential poets' fascination with the 'strangeness' of social structures and with cultural difference is illumined through comparative readings of Scott's collected ballads and narrative poetry, together with Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, his Eastern Tales and his late, utopian South-Sea poem The Island. Discussion of a prolific range of literary, intellectual, and sociological influences emphasizes the enlightenment background to early-nineteenth-century anxieties over cultural instability arising from revolution, war and social change. Exemplary readings show how Scott addressed radical and anti-radical activity in Britain, along with fears of invasion, through his representations of older, feudal and clan systems, and how Byron responded within poetic figurations of contested boundaries from southern Europe and North Africa, through the Near East and beyond. Intriguing exegeses and assiduous scholarship make this a compelling book for academics and the interested, general reader.
Reviews
Winner of the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize. For more information see the prize's website: http://www.britac.ac.uk/misc/medals/crawshay.html
'Susan Oliver has written a very fine book on the poetry of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron which puts to compelling use the concept of the border as a geographical, political and metaphorical site of 'Cultural encounter'...Oliver's chapters on Scott and Byron are written with a level of clarity, conviction and energy which makes them a pleasure to read.' - Paul M. Curtis, Romanticism
Contents
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
List of Maps
Introduction: North, South, East-and West: The Strangeness of 'Debateable Lands'
Collecting Ballads and Resisting Radical Energies: Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
Scott's Narrative Poetry: The Borders and the Highland Margins
Crossing 'Dark Barriers': Byron, Europe and the Near East in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Cantos 1 and 2
Byron's Eastern Tales: Eastern Themes and Contexts
Bibliography
Index
Authors
SUSAN OLIVER is a Senior Member of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge and Visiting Fellow at the University of Essex. From September 2007 she will be Lecturer in Long-Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Salford, UK.
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