"Byromania". Byron's Struggle With Celebrity

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1.0, University of Constance, language: English, abstract: When George Gordon Byron, better known as Lord Byron, sails from Dover to Ostend on 25 April 1816, he leaves his homeland forever. When he departed England for the first time in his youth, he was an unknown young poet seeking adventures in Albania, Turkey and Greece. Now, he is ¿ after Wellington and Prince Regent ¿ the best- known man in England and flees the outraged British public and into exile. In the time between his first return and final departure from England, he achieved previously unheard levels of poetic fame and an interest in one ¿s personality, which is why many critics regard him as ¿the first truly modern literary celebrity¿. The question that arises is, what it means to be a celebrity and why Byron nevertheless needs to leave England.

The phenomenon of celebrity has become a defining and omnipresent characteristic of our mediatized societies, but only for the last years scholars have begun to see celebrity ¿s roots in 19th century Romanticism.

This paper will focus on the time between 1812 and 1816 and will investigate the early beginnings of celebrity based on the life of Lord Byron: How far is celebrity different from fame? How does Byron become a celebrity and what effects does it have on his life? Claiming that Byron himself purposefully supports the interest in him as a person, I will furthermore show that slowly celebrity becomes a prison for him and forces him leave England.