Byron's Othered Self and Voice: Contextualizing the Homographic Signature (Studies in Nineteenth-Century British Literature, V. 21)

175 Pages·2003·0.62 MB·English

by  Abigail F. Keegan

Byron’s Othered Self
and Voice:
Contextualizing the
Homographic Signature
Abigail F. Keegan
PETER LANG
Byron’s Othered Self and Voice
STUDIES IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY
BRITISH LITERATURE
Regina Hewitt
General Editor
Vol. 21
PETER LANG
New York ! Washington, D.C./Baltimore ! Bern
Frankfurt am Main ! Berlin ! Brussels ! Vienna ! Oxford
Abigail F. Keegan
Byron’s Othered Self
and Voice
Contextualizing the Homographic
Signature
PETER LANG
New York ! Washington, D.C./Baltimore ! Bern
Frankfurt am Main ! Berlin ! Brussels ! Vienna ! Oxford
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Keegan, Abigail F.
Byron’s othered self and voice: contextualizing
the homographic signature / Abigail F. Keegan.
p. cm. — (Studies in nineteenth-century British literature. v. 21)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788–1824—Criticism and
interpretation. 2. Homosexuality and literature—Great
Britain—History—19th century. 3. Difference (Psychology) in literature.
4. Homosexuality, Male, in literature. 5. Sexual orientation in literature.
6. Self in literature. 7. Sex in literature. I. Title. II. Series.
PR4392.H56K44 821’.7—dc21 2003003750
ISBN 0-8204-6742-1
ISSN 1071-0124
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek.
Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available
on the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de/.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council of Library Resources.
© 2003 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York
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All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
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Printed in Germany
By analyzing the English Romantic Era’s masculine gender norms as a set of
contrasts between a heterosexual “norm” and a sodomitic “other,” this book
isolates four tropes that distinguish the sodomite: criminality, silence,
effeminacy, and foreignness. These tropes are then traced through Byron’s early
poetry, the first two cantos of Childe Harold and the popular Oriental tales,
demonstrating the ways the Byronic persona and the Byronic hero are deeply
indebted to the conflicted sites of homosexual meaning in the Romantic age.
Discussions of legal and literary cases, as well as attention to the political
implications of heterosexuality as an ideal created to serve a (re)productive
ideology of empire, make this study of interest not only to Romantic scholars, but
also to scholars of gender theory, history, and postcolonial studies.
Abigail F. Keegan is Associate Professor of English and Women’s Literature at
Oklahoma City University. She received her Ph.D. in English from the University
of Oklahoma. In addition to essays on American and British writers and
numerous poems, she has published two books of poetry, The Feast of the
AssumptionsandOklahoma Journey.
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“In this lively and incisive work, Keegan studies the political and psychological
conditions that inform Byron’s poetry. Byron’s Othered Self and Voice combines
exquisite close readings of individual poems with careful analysis of literary, cultural,
historical, and biographical contexts that are crucial to the understanding of his writing.
In focusing on the figure of the sodomite and on the ways Byron’s poetry makes
reference to the contemporary treatment of this figure, Keegan has made an important
contribution to the study of Romanticism, gender, and sexuality.
Daniel Cottom, David Burr Chair of Letters, University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma
“Dr. Keegan has given a great gift to Byron and rendered an important service to popular
culture scholars in her dazzling act of literary historical recovery: George Gordon was the
popular culture super star of his time, as publicly adored, privately debauched, and
personally anguished as Elvis Presley. Her brilliant recuperation of the Vere Street
Massacre, a horrific occasion of social repression with consequences surpassing those of
the Salem Witch Trials and the Stonewall Riots, and connecting that event to Byron’s
writing of the Oriental Tales, legal texts, and popular culture ephemera will give
delighted readers new insights and information about the history and culture of male
(homo)sexuality, Byron’s place in that history, and that history’s role in the creation of
his much mythologized but heretofore incompletely understood Byronic hero.”
Susan Koppelman, Editor of “The Strange History of Suzanne LaFleshe”
and author of Other Stories of Women and Fatness and Two Friends
and Other Nineteenth-Century Lesbian Stories by American Women Writers
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To Barbara
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TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S
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Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Introduction:
Everything Begins and Ends with E: Methodiste
and Melancholy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Chapter One
Abject Figures and Subversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Chapter Two
Byron’s Poetics: Permutations of Silence:
Sodomy, Rhetoric, and Pre-texts to Childe Harold . . . . . . . .41
Chapter Three
The Sexual Outlaw: The Giaour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73
Chapter Four
Disturbing Gender: The Bride of Abydos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95
Chapter Five:
The Corsair: A Pirate and a Homicidal Woman,
Disrupting Sexual Difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113
Chapter Six
Coming to Terms: Lara, the Effeminate Page,
and Queer Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145
Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157