Byron and Orientalism

Book excerpt: Of all the English Romantic poets Byron is often thought of as the one who was most familiar with the East. His travels, it is claimed, give him a huge advantage with which contemporaries like Southey, Moore, Shelley, and Coleridge, who had comparable orientalist ambitions, could not compete. Byron and Orientalism sets out to examine this thesis. It looks at Byron’s knowledge of the East, and of its religions in particular, in greater detail than ever before. Essays are included on Byron’s Turkish Tales, Edward Said’s attitude to Byron, Byron’s version of Islam, Byron’s Hebrew Melodies, and Byron’s influence on the orientalist writings of Pushkin and Lermontov. There is a massive introduction, setting Byron’s eastern poetry in the contexts both of European literature, English literature, and the poet’s own confused and disorientated existence. 'This is an extremely valuable - impressively diverse and genuinely multidisciplinary - collection of essays, which will be of great interest to a variety of audiences. The topic of Byron and Orientalism offers similarly rich potential and Peter Cochran brings a great wealth of expertise to bear on the subject in his substantial contributions to this volume.' James Watt, Liverpool University Press.