Chapter 16 - In Byron’s Wake

Summary

This chapter explores Byron’s reception through the lens of the Byronic sense of occasion. Focusing on the history of Byron’s contemporary reception, it argues that Byronic reception involves a transformed scene of reading and writing, and a transformed temporality, which is acutely attuned to a sense of occasion, stretching the moment of reception and production across a longue durée. It is a critical commonplace that Byron’s writing is about its own creation and production, but it is also about its reception. The story of Byron’s reception also tells us about the changing practices of Romantic criticism and culture more broadly. The Byron phenomenon taught its contemporaries to think of the poem as a performance, an event, an experience. It is also a kind of entourage. In this transformed scene of reading and writing, the text’s reception – always already anticipated – forms part of the entourage. The chapter examines how Byron’s works contribute to this sustained sense of the text as entourage, event, and public occasion – in furious conversation with its own past, present, and future audiences.