Byron Society Panel:
Byron and Disability
1999 MLA Chicago - 27-30 December 1999
The importance of Byron's clubfoot was a commonplace of his
nineteenth-century reception. In 1812, Keppel Craven wrote
that he had heard that Byron planned "to sell everything he possesses in
England and retire into Greece, where, I suppose, he
thinks no one will take notice of his lameness--for that seems to be his
great quarrel with the whole world." Later in Daniel
Deronda, George Eliot unflatteringly described the effect of Byron's
disability on his personality: "The sense of entailed
disadvantage--the deformed foot doubtfully hidden by the shoe, makes a
restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a
self-centred, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite." Yet twentieth-century
critics have been far more comfortable talking about
other aspects of Byron's body, such as his weight or his sexuality, than
about his disability. The goal of this panel is to open up
the topic of Byron's disability and to examine various ways of
discussing its relevance to his life and work.
Please submit 2-page abstracts or completed papers by March 15 to:
Andrew Elfenbein
Department. of English
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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