With Byron’s “The Giaour” I too have experienced Dilacey’s
confusion. The extent of my understanding of what’s going on is that someone
died in the ocean, that someone attempted to save said person,
and that this person was a kind of hero. Oh, and a bit about how awesome Greece
was. Why does Greece get so much attention with the romantics? Why do Romantics
find such fascination with exoticism? Southey, Byron, Wordsworth, they are all
fascinated with a certain ethnographic. It strikes me as slightly disingenuous
to have all this wonder manufactured around groups of people by making them
exotic. Byron, being the globetrotter he thought himself to be, made a
commodity so to speak of different cultures.
I don’t like this. I’ll take Scott's own brand of nationalism
and fantasy over this stuff. I’ll take Clare’s earthen prose, and Darwin’s
strange and weird obsession with sex and botany.
I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU. What is the obsession with Greece? I understand that what happened was epic and all, but come on, let it go. This poem has been a serious Challenge for me as most of Byron's poetry is, but I think I'm getting a handle on it. The political overtones are hard to pick up on and well.. I don't like it either
ReplyDeleteJon you don't like anything we have read this semester.:P I don't agree that Byron made a commodity of Greece. A person can love a place and continuously write about it because they are drawn to it. It is not any different than someone writing poems or songs about someone they love.
ReplyDeleteYou're pretty much right about everything here. I did like Scott!
DeleteThink of how picturesque it all is--how sublime! I think like with many writers, the historical context is very important. Not only must you think of the fact that these Romantics are looking back on antiquity, but also what it means to the world they lived in at the time (obviously Greece was a harem girl that cheated on her master with an infidel).
ReplyDeleteAlso, think of it not entirely a disingenuous, but as an outsider looking at something that was previously unknown. I realize it's a bastardization of the original, but it's being collected and projected back to the masses, so they in turn can do the same thing.
I feel like I'm rambling now, so I'll stop here!