In Byron's Shadow Modern Greece in the English and American Imagination [Hardcover]

Modern Greece, constructed by the early nineteenth-century ideals and ideas associated with Byron, has been haunted, holy ground in English and American literature for almost two centuries.In Byron's Shadowanalyzes how authors employ ideas about romantic nationalism, gender politics, shifts in cultural constructions, and literary experimentation to create variations of Greece to suit changing eras.

Based on dauntingly wide reading, David Roessel's study provides an astute, convincing and unsentimental survey of the ways in which anglophone writers' reactions to Greece have changed over the years.... All philhellenes will findIn Byron's Shadowabsorbing. --Times Literary Supplement

Roessel demonstrates in staggering detail that most writers about Greece have failed abysmally by seeking the ideal rather than relishing the more complex realities of the place...Roessel's book possesses an importance beyond the academic field of neo-hellenism or that of postcolonial studies. It is about the imagination, and through its particulars involves us with the problem of any literary endeavor...In Byron's Shadowis not only an essential contribution to the study of Greece but a lively and compelling story of reading, writing, the imagination, and what these things have to do with historical reality. --The Hudson Review

This book is a sheer delight. It is rare to come across such a combination of readability, anecdotal pleasure, intelligence, research..., erudition and passion. Roessel's book is no mere survey and synopsis of literature, though of course there is a great deal of this. He pursues a number of interesting theses with keen intelligence, and the pages are dotted with insights--too many to summarize. --Bryn Mawr Classical Review

At a time when books on Byron continue to proliferate, it is a pleasure to be able to recommend a new study which is well researched, thoughtful, anlCß