“Epic (and Historiography)”

This chapter discusses Byron’s epics and mock-epics in relation to a broad history of the genre, referencing key examples from Virgil to Tasso. It covers the ambitions of epic as a genre, its mock-heroic developments in Italy (Pulci), and contemporary Romantic critical ideas about epic. The rationale for linking epic with history and historiography is to detail the influence of history writing and historiography upon Byron's variations on the epic model, referencing contemporary figures such as Voltaire, Daru, Sismondi, Gibbon's Decline and Fall and Mitford’s History of Greece. The essay also discusses Byron’s use of ottava rima (after Pulci) in Don Juan and his satirical attacks on Southey’s epics.