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  • Byron and the Poetics of Adversity

    Byron and the Poetics of Adversity by McGann, Jerome;

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      • Publisher's listprice GBP 16.99
      • The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.

        8 116 Ft (7 730 Ft + 5% VAT)
      • Discount 20% (cc. 1 623 Ft off)
      • Discounted price 6 493 Ft (6 184 Ft + 5% VAT)

    8 116 Ft

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    Availability

    Estimated delivery time: In stock at the publisher, but not at Prospero's office. Delivery time approx. 3-5 weeks.
    Not in stock at Prospero.

    Why don't you give exact delivery time?

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    Product details:

    • Publisher Cambridge University Press
    • Date of Publication 10 July 2025

    • ISBN 9781009232937
    • Binding Paperback
    • No. of pages228 pages
    • Weight 247 g
    • Language English
    • 669

    Categories

    Short description:

    A landmark study that unearths Byron's profound, enduring critique of the failures of language and the contradictions of his age.

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    Long description:

    A long line of traditional, often conservative, criticism and cultural commentary deplored Byron as a slipshod poet. This pithy yet aptly poetic book, written by one of the world's foremost Romantic scholars, argues that assessment is badly mistaken. Byron's great subject is what he called 'Cant': the habit of abusing the world through misusing language. Setting up his poetry as a laboratory to investigate failures of writing, reading, and thinking, Byron delivered sharp critical judgment on the costs exacted by a careless approach to his Mother Tongue. Perspicuous readings of Byron alongside some of his Romantic contemporaries - Burns, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley - reveal Byron's startling reconfiguration of poetry as a 'broken mirror' and shattered lamp. The paradoxical result was to argue that his age's contradictions, and his own, offered both ethical opportunities and a promise of poetic - broadly cultural - emancipation. This book represents a major contribution to ideas about Romanticism.

    'A new book by Jerome McGann is an event, though there have been many such events over his long career. But a new book by him about Byron is a special kind of event. No other scholar has done as much for Byron as McGann has, and few living scholars as much for any single author as he has done for Byron. This book marks a kind of return to origins since, like McGann's first book,&&&160;Fiery Dust, this one focuses on Byron's work before&&&160;Don Juan. The new emphasis, however, falls on Byron's relationship to language and poetic craft and on how it differs from that of his major contemporaries. Playful, allusive, and itself&&&160;'adverse,'&&&160;McGann's style in this book, like Byron's own, means to set our&&&160;language free.' James K. Chandler, William K. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago

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    Table of Contents:

    1. Don Juan and the English language; 2. Byron Agonistes, 1809-1816; 3. Manfred: one word for mercy; 4. Byron and the 'Wrong Revolutionary Poetical System'; 5. Byron, Blake, and the adversity of poetics; 6. The stubborn foe: bad verse and the poetry of action.

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