Byron before Byron
<p>Byron’s early poems – his so-called ’dark tales’ – have been dismissed by critics as the tawdry, slapdash products of an uninteresting mind, and readers ever since have found it difficult not to see them in light of the poet’s dramatic and public later life. In a recent piece for the&nbsp;<em>LRB</em>, Clare Bucknell looked past the famous biography to observe the youthful Byron’s mind at work in poems such as&nbsp;<em>The Giaour</em>&nbsp;(1813),&nbsp;<em>The Corsair</em>&nbsp;(1814) and&nbsp;<em>Lara</em>&nbsp;(1814), where early versions of the Byronic hero were often characterised by passivity, rumination and choicelessness.</p><p>Clare discusses the piece with Tom, and talks about her new Close Readings series,&nbsp;<em>On Satire</em>, with Colin Burrow, which features&nbsp;<em>Don Juan</em>&nbsp;alongside works by Jane Austen, Laurence Sterne, John Donne, Muriel Spark and others.</p><p>Read Clare's piece on Byron: <a href="https://lrb.me/byronpod" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://lrb.me/byronpod</a></p><p>Join Clare and Colin Burrow for their series on satire next year, and receive all the books under discussion,&nbsp;access to online seminars and the rest of the Close Readings audio, with Close Readings Plus: <a href="https://lrb.me/plusyt" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://lrb.me/plusyt</a></p><p>To subscribe to the audio only, and access all our other Close Readings series:</p><p>Sign up directly in Apple here:&nbsp;<a href="https://apple.co/3pJoFPq" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://apple.co/3pJoFPq</a></p><p>In other podcast apps:&nbsp;<a href="https://lrb.me/byronsc" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://lrb.me/byronsc</a></p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
The LRB Podcast · The London Review of Books
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Show Notes
Byron’s early poems – his so-called ’dark tales’ – have been dismissed by critics as the tawdry, slapdash products of an uninteresting mind, and readers ever since have found it difficult not to see them in light of the poet’s dramatic and public later life. In a recent piece for the LRB, Clare Bucknell looked past the famous biography to observe the youthful Byron’s mind at work in poems such as The Giaour (1813), The Corsair (1814) and Lara (1814), where early versions of the Byronic hero were often characterised by passivity, rumination and choicelessness.
Clare discusses the piece with Tom, and talks about her new Close Readings series, On Satire, with Colin Burrow, which features Don Juan alongside works by Jane Austen, Laurence Sterne, John Donne, Muriel Spark and others.
Read Clare's piece on Byron: https://lrb.me/byronpod
Join Clare and Colin Burrow for their series on satire next year, and receive all the books under discussion, access to online seminars and the rest of the Close Readings audio, with Close Readings Plus: https://lrb.me/plusyt
To subscribe to the audio only, and access all our other Close Readings series:
Sign up directly in Apple here: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq
In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/byronsc
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.