Adam McCune

Abstract:An 1813 letter written by Lady Oxford, never before published in full, answers literary and biographical questions about her relationship with Byron. Biographers argue whether she had a pregnancy by Byron and why Byron did not mention it again; this letter confirms that she did have a pregnancy which ended in a miscarriage. Byron’s nickname for Lady Oxford’s daughter Lady Charlotte Harley, ‘Ianthe’, is sometimes treated as an interpretive key to Byron’s poems to Charlotte, but does not appear in early drafts, and is only added to ‘To Ianthe’ many months after Lady Oxford and Charlotte left England. This letter shows that the epithet ‘Ianthe’ was connected to the portrait of Charlotte before she left England, placing the name closer to the composition of the poems and supporting its interpretive significance.

ABSTRACT In place of traditional suspicious readings of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898), I employ Sharon Marcus’s “just reading” to explain the children’s behaviour in terms of their frankly expressed desires: time to themselves, a return to school for Miles and the authority of their social class. I argue that the novel is the story of the children’s desires, how their desires are inhibited by the governess and how the children perform a series of roles—innocent childhood, “naughty” boyhood and high-class adulthood—in an effort to gain what they want. This presents an opportunity to reframe the debate over the novel: the chief question is not whether the ghosts are real but whether the children desire (and are responsible for) collusion with ghosts (real or not). James critiques cultural assumptions about children’s alterity, instead portraying children as humans with their own desires and agency.

Abstract:Byron scholars have observed that Byron commonly treats identities as performances rather than essences. However, excluding children from such performances of identity, scholars see Byron's 'To Ianthe' (1814) as a portrait of inherent childhood innocence. Byron's biographers and child studies scholars point out that portrayals of children as passively innocent expose the child character and child reader to exploitation by the adult author. I argue instead that in Byron's 'To Ianthe' the child does participate in the performance of identity. The poem describes many models of childhood—innocence, erotic desirability, cultured competence—presenting these different models of childhood to the reader as options: different roles the child reader may select to perform. Emphasising the child performer of roles over adult prescriptions for childhood, the poem treats all adult prescriptions as scripts subject to selection and adaptation by the child perform...

Jerome McGann has established that Lord Byron’s poem “Go—triumph securely” is addressed to Byron’s lover Lady Caroline Lamb,2 and that although “in fact Lady Caroline remained perfectly faithful to Byron” at the time of composition, the poem “sets out to imagine” her supposedly inevitable future betrayal.3 A unique, previously unnoticed text of Lord Byron’s poem “Go—triumph securely” shows that Byron’s revisions of the poem shifted between an emphasis on the speaker’s childlike emotions and an emphasis on his adult fortitude. Byron had drafted at least the penultimate stanza of “Go—triumph securely” by September 18, 1812, when he included that stanza in a letter to Lady Melbourne.4 His revisions came at a time when he redirected his affections from Lady Caroline to Lady Oxford, who was “double [Byron’s] own age,”5 and to Lady Oxford’s eleven-year-old daughter, Lady Charlotte Harley, of whom he wrote, “My years already doubly number thine,”6 and whom he half-jestingly said he would m...

An 1813 letter written by Lady Oxford, never before published in full, answers literary and biographical questions about her relationship with Byron. Biographers argue whether she had a pregnancy by Byron and why Byron did not mention it again; this letter confirms that she did have a pregnancy which ended in a miscarriage. Byron’s nickname for Lady Oxford’s daughter Lady Charlotte Harley, ‘Ianthe’, is sometimes treated as an interpretive key to Byron’s poems to Charlotte, but does not appear in early drafts, and is only added to ‘To Ianthe’ many months after Lady Oxford and Charlotte left England. This letter shows that the epithet ‘Ianthe’ was connected to the portrait of Charlotte before she left England, placing the name closer to the composition of the poems and supporting its interpretive significance.

Byron scholars have observed that Byron commonly treats identities as performances rather than essences. However, excluding children from such performances of identity, scholars see Byron’s ‘To Ianthe’ (1814) as a portrait of inherent childhood innocence. Byron’s biographers and child studies scholars point out that portrayals of children as passively innocent expose the child character and child reader to exploitation by the adult author. I argue instead that in Byron’s ‘To Ianthe’ the child does participate in the performance of identity. The poem describes many models of childhood—innocence, erotic desirability, cultured competence—presenting these different models of childhood to the reader as options: different roles the child reader may select to perform. Emphasising the child performer of roles over adult prescriptions for childhood, the poem treats all adult prescriptions as scripts subject to selection and adaptation by the child performer, demonstrating Byron’s recognition of child agency.

In place of traditional suspicious readings of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898), I employ Sharon Marcus’s “just reading” to explain the children’s behaviour in terms of their frankly expressed desires: time to themselves, a return to school for Miles and the authority of their social class. I argue that the novel is the story of the children’s desires, how their desires are inhibited by the governess and how the children perform a series of roles—innocent childhood, “naughty” boyhood and high-class adulthood—in an effort to gain what they want. This presents an opportunity to reframe the debate over the novel: the chief question is not whether the ghosts are real but whether the children desire (and are responsible for) collusion with ghosts (real or not). James critiques cultural assumptions about children’s alterity, instead portraying children as humans with their own desires and agency.