Prose: Moore’s Multiform Byron

In this chapter, I analyse Romantic biography, focussing on the key example of Thomas Moore’s Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of his Life (1830–31). Although life-writing is central to most accounts of Romanticism, biography has generally been overlooked by scholars. I suggest that this is due to the fact that biography does not portray the self as necessary. For this reason, many scholars have doubted there is any such thing as ‘Romantic’ biography. In the traditional theory of Romantic autobiography, the writer describes their own life and has the power to define their own identity. This reflexive or ‘specular’ structure fits in with traditional accounts of Romanticism as the literature of the necessary self (de Man). Romantic biographies, by contrast, are typically loosely structured and frequently sceptical about the wholeness or unity of the self. Moore’s Byron is a case in point. Moore argues that Byron was ‘not one, but many’, and says he cannot find a ‘pivot of character’ that sums up Byron’s personality. Not only can Byron not necessitate himself in Moore’s biography, but Moore the biographer cannot either. In Sect. 6.1, I examine Moore’s prose style and its underlying philosophy. Moore drew on his wide reading in eighteenth-century philosophy to construct a highly sceptical philosophy of self, centred on the terms ‘genius’ and ‘character’. Moore expressed this philosophy in his light, paratactic and scholarly style. In Sect. 6.2, I use sentiment analysis to examine the plot-structure of Moore’s Byron in comparison with other Romantic biographies. Moore developed a uniquely varied and chaotic plot-structure to portray Byron as a man of ‘extreme mobility’ of character. In Sect. 6.3, I consider the ‘specular structure’ of Moore’s Byron and show how Moore’s scepticism about Byron’s identity bleeds into scepticism about his own sense of self. I conclude that the theory of the contingent self can give us a newfound appreciation for the art of Romantic biography.