Transformations of Byron in the literature of British India

Ni Fhlathuin, Maire

Abstract

This essay examines the reception of Byron’s work, and some responses to it, among the poets of the British community in India during the first half of the nineteenth century.
The first section sketches some of the routes by which Byron’s work and accounts of his life were circulated and read in India and demonstrates the impact of his work on the poets of British India. These poets co-opted Byronic texts into their own writings in the form of epigraphs and other citations and allusions, composed responses to Byron and his work, and imitated the tropes, formats and themes of Byron’s poetry. The second section of the essay looks in more detail at selected examples of the many adaptations and imitations of Byron’s work that proliferated during this period. In these poems, Byronic models are propriated by writers whose chosen professions or relationships have the effect of aligning them with the colonial project of the East India Company. They re-imagined the encounter with the romanticized Orient that characterizes many of Byron’s works in response to the specific political and cultural contexts of British India in the nineteenth century.

Citation

Ni Fhlathuin, M. (2014). Transformations of Byron in the literature of British India. Victorian Literature and Culture, 42(3), 573-593. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1060150314000151

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 9, 2014
• Online Publication Date: Jun 6, 2014
• Publication Date: Sep 30, 2014
• Deposit Date: Sep 19, 2013
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 6, 2014
• Journal: Victorian Literature and Culture
• Print ISSN: 1060-1503
• Electronic ISSN: 1060-1503
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 42
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 573-593
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1060150314000151
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/999409
• Publisher URL: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9318502&fileId=S1060150314000151
• Additional Information: This article has been accepted for publication and will appear in a revised form, subsequent to editorial input by Cambridge University Press, in 'Victorian Literature and Culture'. Copyright Cambridge University Press.