Byron and the Victorians by Andrew Elfenbein - 9780521607087

Byron and the VictoriansAuthor(s): Andrew Elfenbein\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521607087, 978-0521607087\nSynopsis\nThis book is the first full-length study of Byron's influence on Victorian writers, concentrating on Carlyle, Emily Bront, Tennyson, Bulwer Lytton, Disraeli, and Wilde. It has two emphases, theoretical and literary-historical. Its theoretical project is to revise earlier understanding of literary influence through a demonstration of the ways that institutions of cultural production mediate the access that later writers have to earlier ones. Its literary-historical project is to suggest the many different responses that Victorian writers had to Byron and to his celebrity in British culture. It argues that defining oneself against Byron became a ritual of the Victorian authorial career. Victorian writers did not reject Byron outright: instead, they defined themselves through .