[MGSA-L] Princeton Hellenic Studies Lecture: November 29, 2010

Dimitri H. Gondicas gondicas at Princeton.EDU
Mon Nov 22 12:24:14 PST 2010


 

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

 

Program in Hellenic Studies

 

Lecture

 

Byron's The Siege of Corinth and the

Destruction of the Parthenon

 

David Roessel *97

The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

 

This paper examines two Byronic paradoxes.  The first is that Byron
based his poem The Siege of Corinth on a historical event that occurred
in 1715, but then rewrites the facts of that event.  Indeed, I will
argue that Byron's version of the end of the Venetian rule in Greece
looks back to "the freedom Venice gave of yore" beginning in the 1680s
to include the most dramatic action of that campaign, the capture of
Athens in 1687. The second is that while Byron heaps opprobrium on Elgin
for his activities on the Acropolis, he has no harsh words for Francesco
Morosini, the man who caused the explosion of the Turkish magazine in
the Parthenon in 1687. Morosini also destroyed some of the pedimental
sculptures when attempting to remove and take them to Venice.  I will
examine what Byron has to say about Morosini, and why he does not come
in for more Byronic censure.  I will also suggest how the explosion at
the end of The Siege of Corinth might reflect the explosion when the
Venetians were taking Athens.  The Siege of Corinth, then needs to be
looked at with reference to Byron's other Eastern Tales, but also in
connection to perceptions about Venice's Greek empire and the career of
Franceso Morosini.  The knowledge that The Siege of Corinth has
references to the Venetian conquest of the Morea as well as to the loss
of the region in 1715 adds a layer of meaning to the poem, and helps us
to understand how Byron differentiates Elgin and Morosini.  Does Byron,
in the end, suggest that one can destroy antiquities for the right
cause?

 

David Roessel is the Peter and Stella Yiannos Professor of Greek
Language and Literature at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
and the Associate Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Hellenic
Studies.  He is the author of In Byron's Shadow: Modern Greece in the
English and American Imagination and the co-translator, with Soterios
Stavrou, of Costas Montis's novel Closed Doors.   Among his other works,
he is the co-editor, with his former Hellenic Studies colleague at
Princeton Nicholas Moschovakis, Mister Paradise and Other One-Act Plays
by Tennessee Williams and The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams.

Monday, November 29, 2010

6:00 p.m.

Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

 

This lecture is made possible by the Christos and Rhoda Papaioannou
Modern Greek Studies Fund

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