David Duff
22nd March, IN-PERSON
6.30pm-8.00pm, Art Workers Guild
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Ticket Price: £5.00
Wine reception 6.30 pm
Lecture at 7.00 pm
Dinner from 8.00 pm
Enquiries: contact@thebyronsociety.com[/ezcol_2third_end]
John Hookham Frere’s pseudonymous Prospectus and Specimen of an Intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft (1817) is recognised as a model for Byron’s use of comic ottava rima and the figure of a chatty, self-reflexive narrator in Beppo and Don Juan. But the poem’s significance for Byron extends beyond that. Frere’s wide-ranging satire of the British book trade, including marketing devices such as prospectuses, specimens, and grandiose-sounding labels like ‘national work’, has multiple echoes in Byron’s poetry. David Duff will show how Frere draws on his experience as a co-founder of The Anti-Jacobin and the Quarterly Review, and how his techniques mirror other contemporary experiments with mock-prospectuses and bibliographic satire. Byron takes this subject matter and satiric method to a new level of imaginative accomplishment, creating a comic poetry that is genuinely ‘national’, and international, in scope. Byron’s personal connections with Frere through the John Murray circle provide a further context for my exploration of this under-researched but formative literary relationship.
DETAILS
[ezcol_1third]Where:
Art Workers Guild
6 Queen Square
Bloomsbury
London WC1N 3AT
See Map
[/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_1third] When:
Drinks 6.30-7.00
Lecture 7.00-8.00pm
There will be a dinner for those who wish to join, details will be confirmed closer to the time.
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Tickets
Enquiries: contact@thebyronsociety.com
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