The essay seeks to contribute to the debate about Byron’s impact on European history and politics as this was staged at the 39th International Byron Conference held in London in 2013. The appropriation of Byron’s Oriental Tales that occurred during the trial of the leaders of the Pentrich rising of 1817 is used to illustrate the ambivalent aspects of the Byronic model of charismatic political leadership in the context of the nineteenth-century struggle for democracy in England. The essay then turns to the impact of Byron in Italy during the period leading up to Italian unification in 1861, and specifically discusses two works by the Calabrian authors Domenico Mauro and Vincenzo Padula, illustrating the ways in which the Byronic model was appropriated and applied to a very different local situation, by making Calabrian brigands the heroes of fictional stories, and showing how in Padula’s later work _Antonello, brigante calabrese_ this appropriation takes on an explicitly politicized form, exceeding that of the original model by superimposing on to the nihilistic revolt of the Byronic Hero the ideals of the Risorgimento.
Byron's Impact: English Radicals, Italian Brigands and the Byronic Hero
POOLE, Gabriele
2014-01-01
Abstract
The essay seeks to contribute to the debate about Byron’s impact on European history and politics as this was staged at the 39th International Byron Conference held in London in 2013. The appropriation of Byron’s Oriental Tales that occurred during the trial of the leaders of the Pentrich rising of 1817 is used to illustrate the ambivalent aspects of the Byronic model of charismatic political leadership in the context of the nineteenth-century struggle for democracy in England. The essay then turns to the impact of Byron in Italy during the period leading up to Italian unification in 1861, and specifically discusses two works by the Calabrian authors Domenico Mauro and Vincenzo Padula, illustrating the ways in which the Byronic model was appropriated and applied to a very different local situation, by making Calabrian brigands the heroes of fictional stories, and showing how in Padula’s later work _Antonello, brigante calabrese_ this appropriation takes on an explicitly politicized form, exceeding that of the original model by superimposing on to the nihilistic revolt of the Byronic Hero the ideals of the Risorgimento.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
