At the Margins of Europe: Byron’s East Revisited and The Giaour

Abstract

Greece, in Byron’s work and life, seems so central, so symbolically tied to ideas of freedom and commitment, that it is easy to forget how marginal Greece was in the Europe of Byron’s time. Byron’s East is an anomalous composite, framed by four elements: the imperial force of the Ottoman Empire, the framing structure of classical Greece, a loosely defined Albanian presence operating both within the limits of the Ottoman Empire, but in some ways resistant to it, and what can be described as ‘modern Greece’. In reconstructing this network of Turkish/European oppositional attitudes, we can see with greater clarity how Byron approached his Giaour and to what extent Byron’s difficulties in escaping from the traditional representation of classical Greece are only partially resolved in Childe Harold.