Arthur Kahn

Byron's Single Difference with Homer and Virgil: and Other Essays on the Poet's Interplay with the Literatures of Greece and Rome Arthur Kahn

With the near disappearance of the study of the Classics, students of literature as well as general readers lack the background to share the pleasure of Byron's contemporaries, steeped like him in the Classical literatures, in the constant interplay in his prose and poetry with the literatures of Greece and Rome. Byron underwent an intense drilling in Latin and Greek and in works of literature in both languages. Throughout his life he continued to study the Classical authors. In this book the author demonstrates how Byron repeatedly looked to Classical authors as models for his own compositions, conning as a twenty-year-old Quintilian's Institutes in preparing his frame-breakers oration in the House of Lords, studying the plays of Seneca while composing his dramatic works, turning to Theocritus and Virgil as models in pastoral poetry and to Horace and Juvenal for verse satire; and, finally, setting Homer and Virgil as foils for his mock epic masterpiece, Don Juan. The author reveals a level of artistry in Byron's works rarely explored and appreciated. In this book the author seeks to demonstrate an entire level of artistry in Byron's poetry and prose rarely recognized by students and readers in the twenty-first century.