Feeling Ridiculous with Lord Byron

19th September 2023

In Person

Dr Andy McInnes

Byron enjoyed a joke, from bringing a pet bear to college to get round a ban on dogs to ridiculing everything and everyone, including himself, in Don Juan. This paper will explore Byron’s relationship with the ridiculous, theorised as the flipside of the sublime combining silliness, lowness, and vulnerabiliity. The ridiculous, as distinct from ridicule, offers Byron a way to think beyond the self to consider alternative forms of collectivity and collaboration, bringing different groups of people in shared laughter to forge alternative ways of being in the world.