'All hearts were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light': The Byronic Hero and Cultural Apocalypse: Reading Group Session
Between June and November 1816, the Romantic poet Lord Byron hired a mansion,
the Villa Diodati, on the shores of Lake Geneva. 1816 became known as the ‘year
without a summer’, due to
the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. Parts of Europe were cloaked with ash
and debris, which transformed the environment into a sombre landscape. This
natural disaster prompted a prophecy by an anonymous Italian astronomer that
the world would end on 18 July, and caused widespread panic and loss of
religious faith. During this turbulent summer, Byron was joined in Geneva by
his physician, John William Polidori, his fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and
Shelley’s companions Claire Clairmont and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who was
soon to be Shelley’s wife. Their stay in the villa is most remembered for the ‘ghost
story competition’, in which Mary famously suffered the ‘waking dream’ that would
inspire her novel Frankenstein
(1818). However, it was during this period that Byron wrote one of his most
haunting and apocalyptic poems: ‘Darkness’. In this poem, Byron does not merely
imagine the effects of armageddon upon the Earth, but also draws striking
parallels between the desolate landscape and the deterioration of the human
psyche. In this reading group session, we will consider the relationship
between Byron’s dark vision and the state of humanity following successive
periods of political, as well as natural disasters. Can we interpret this poem as a
comment upon the past horrors of the French Revolution, the present socio-economic
crisis following the Napoleonic Wars, or even the future of an increasingly
industrialised world? Finally, we will address whether there is any hope
implicit within the empty ‘universe’ that both terrifies and captivates the
Byronic speaker.
We welcome participation from staff and postgraduate students from all
disciplines, institutions and historical eras, particularly those with research interests in
the reciprocal relationship between commerce and culture.
For reading materials and the Zoom link, please email: northeastcommerce2019@gmail.com
