Byron and Irish-Italian Freedom - EVENT POSTPONED

We regret to inform you that due to unforeseen circumstances Elisa Cozzi’s talk titled 'Byron and Irish-Italian Freedom’ on Thursday 21 November has been postponed to 2025.

We will communicate the new date as soon as possible.

Byron, the most ‘Italian’ among the English Romantics, is also, with P.B. Shelley, the most concerned with Irish politics, people, and ideas. Italy and Ireland are firmly linked together in Byron’s political imagination—a connection that is not incidental: in the Romantic Period, the analogies between Ireland and Italy are remarkably strong, as the two countries were both grappling with foreign rule, struggling for freedom and independence, and shaping their respective national and cultural identities. At various stages, Byron’s literary output reinforces these parallels: his early parliamentary speech on Catholic Emancipation, the ‘Irish’ Preface of The Corsair, the Irish backstory of Beppo, the Dedication to Don Juan (from which the title is taken), the verse satire ‘The Irish Avatar’, and the prose fragments ‘Detached Thoughts’, as well as his correspondence with the Irish poet Thomas Moore, and his 'conversations' with the Anglo-Irish Lady Blessington, stage intricate sets of Irish-Italian connections and develop a conception of Italy and Ireland as mirror-images of each other’s quest for liberty and nationhood.  

The scholarly attention devoted to Byron’s engagement with Ireland is still limited to his friendship with Thomas Moore, and his wide-ranging literary, political, and personal Irish connections are yet to be thoroughly investigated. The talk will chart the emergence of Byron’s joint Irish and Italian interests from his time as a member of the Whig Holland House Circle in London to his Italian exile and his friendship with Irish expatriates such as the Dante scholar John Taaffe and Lady Blessington in the last three years of his life. 

Admission is Free but booking is required due to the limited number of seats (write to info@keats-shelley-house.org). Entry from 4:45 p.m. onwards.

Elisa Cozzi is a doctoral student in English Language and Literature at the Queen’s College, University of Oxford. Her research explores the literary connections between Italy and Ireland in the Romantic Period, with a focus on the Irish writers who were part of the extended Byron-Shelley circle in Pisa, such as Margaret Mount Cashell, George William Tighe, and John Taaffe. Elisa was the recipient of a Pforzheimer Grant from the Keats-Shelley Association of America in 2021 and an early-career visiting fellowship from Queen Mary University of London in 2023. Her academic publications have appeared in Romanticism, The Keats-Shelley Review, and European Romantic Review.