Byron and the Poetics of Adversity

A long line of traditional, often conservative, criticism and cultural commentary deplored Byron as a slipshod poet. This pithy yet aptly poetic book, written by one of the world''s foremost Romantic scholars, argues that assessment is badly mistaken. Byron''s great subject is what he called ''Cant'': the habit of abusing the world through misusing language. Setting up his poetry as a laboratory t...