|
|
Article: Crossing "Dark Barriers": intertextuality and dialogue between Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott.(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Studies in Romanticism
- Article date:
- March 22, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Boston University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
IN CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE, CANTO 2 (1812), AS HAROLD VENTURES into Ottoman-ruled Albania, Byron writes of his protagonist s passing "From the dark barriers of that rugged clime/ ... o'er many a mount sublime, / Through lands scarce notic'd in historic tales" (11.2.46.406-9). (1) Even the classical mountain of poets, "Lov'd Parnassus, fails," he informs us, "to match some spots that lurk within this lowering coast" (412-14). The darkness of the mountainous border of Albania--a barrier, indeed--into "scarce notic'd" lands where beauty and wild grandeur "lurk," serves as a metaphor for the barbarism of a generally unenlightened, non-western Near East. Behind the rugged ...