Abstract
This article analyses selected cantos of Don Juan in relation to Russian politics and history. Russia’s ‘strangeness’ was a topic of fascination and revulsion for many writers and intellectuals in eighteenth-century Britain. Byron’s masterpiece with its picaresque hero is a key participant in this tradition. The article maps British preoccupations with Russia from Defoe to Byron before considering Byron’s poem in a dialogic engagement with Russian politics in the Romantic period. The critical apparatus is Bakhtinian and historicist and engages critically with recent work on the poem.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 149-164 |
| Journal | Studies in the Literary Imagination |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Publication status | Published - Oct 2003 |
Keywords
- Romanticism
- politics
- history
- Russia