Chapter 33 - European Reception

Summary

In a chapter devoted to Byron in A History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell remarked that Byron’s posthumous reputation was more influential on the Continent than in England, and that it was there that his “spiritual progeny” was to be sought. His death at Mesologgi while supporting the Greek cause against the Ottoman oppressors contributed to the myth of Byron the Romantic poet and aristocratic rebel who gave his life to the cause of freedom against oppression; Russell concludes that as a myth Byron’s importance on the Continent was “enormous.” To adapt Mircea Eliades’ theory of archetypes, Byron could have been the exemplar of the poet as “historical personage” whose life history was metamorphosed by nineteenth-century criticism into an “archetype” of mythical status.