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All Outputs (35)

Reading Byron's Body and Mind (2024)
Book Chapter
Shears, J. (2024). Reading Byron's Body and Mind. In The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron (596-611). Oxford University Press (OUP). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198808800.013.40

This chapter explores the intersections between body and mind in Byron’s work and self-presentation. These can be viewed through five main lenses: the Galenic language of the four humours; discourses of passions and affections; new understanding of t... Read More about Reading Byron's Body and Mind.

Byron's Lyric Poetry (2024)
Book Chapter
Shears, J. (2024). Byron's Lyric Poetry. In The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron (48-63). Oxford University Press (OUP). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198808800.013.39

This chapter proposes that Byron’s lyrics are best understood not as part of the tradition of the imaginative, introspective Romantic lyric, but as an exploration of human relations revealed through close attention to subtle shifts in voice, tone, an... Read More about Byron's Lyric Poetry.

The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron (Ed. Alan Rawes and Jonathon Shears) (2024)
Book
Shears, J., & Rawes, A. (2024). The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron (Ed. Alan Rawes and Jonathon Shears). Oxford University Press (OUP). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198808800.001.0001

The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron offers the latest in critical thinking about the poet that defined the Romantic era in English Literature. The volume presents forty-five groundbreaking essays that enable readers to assess Lord Byron’s central posit... Read More about The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron (Ed. Alan Rawes and Jonathon Shears).

'Thou Breath of Autumn’s Being': Voicing Masculinity in the Poetry of Late Life (2023)
Journal Article
Shears. (in press). 'Thou Breath of Autumn’s Being': Voicing Masculinity in the Poetry of Late Life. Journal of the British Academy, https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/011s2.095

This essay argues that lyric poetry is a form suited to contesting dominant ideas about masculinity because of its thematic and formal preoccupations with voice. It argues that voice offers a different way of viewing the social constrictions that acc... Read More about 'Thou Breath of Autumn’s Being': Voicing Masculinity in the Poetry of Late Life.

‘Rough Critical Winds’: Mis-selling English Pastoral in H. E. Bates’s Larkin Novels, 1958-1970’ (2023)
Journal Article
Shears. (2023). ‘Rough Critical Winds’: Mis-selling English Pastoral in H. E. Bates’s Larkin Novels, 1958-1970’. English Studies, 104(5), https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2023.2188806

The revival of interest in H. E. Bates has largely come without much attention being paid to his series of five novels featuring the Larkin family (1958-1970). The neglect is because of their populist and comic mode. Yet, study of the Larkin novels e... Read More about ‘Rough Critical Winds’: Mis-selling English Pastoral in H. E. Bates’s Larkin Novels, 1958-1970’.

An Allusion to Don Juan: Reappraising Branwell Bronte's Byronic Self-Fashioning (2021)
Journal Article
Shears, J. (2021). An Allusion to Don Juan: Reappraising Branwell Bronte's Byronic Self-Fashioning. Brontë Studies, 30-46. https://doi.org/10.1080/14748932.2021.1991615

In January 1847, Branwell Brontë wrote a letter to his friend J. B. Leyland quoting from Lord Byron’s satirical epic Don Juan. This was an unusual choice of allusion given that the topic is Byron’s feelings of longsuffering that Branwell usually rela... Read More about An Allusion to Don Juan: Reappraising Branwell Bronte's Byronic Self-Fashioning.

Self and Society (2021)
Book Chapter
Shears, J. (2021). Self and Society. . (1). Bloomsbury Publishing

Integrating Video Content into Humanities Teaching: a case study (2020)
Journal Article
Kistler, J., & Shears, J. (2020). Integrating Video Content into Humanities Teaching: a case study. The Journal of Academic Development and Education, https://doi.org/10.21252/bj37-7330

Screencasts and other video content offer an innovative means of improving communication between tutors and students and addressing student concerns about limited contact hours, which can be particularly pressing in English Literature. Our students’... Read More about Integrating Video Content into Humanities Teaching: a case study.

'Old Men - and Women - May be Permitted to Speak Long': Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Voice of Experience (2019)
Journal Article
Shears. (2019). 'Old Men - and Women - May be Permitted to Speak Long': Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Voice of Experience. Romanticism, 249-260. https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2019.0430

This article explores the complications involved in speaking from a position of seniority and experience in the life and work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It goes beyond the familiar caricatures of Coleridge as a garrulous old man, perpetuated by the... Read More about 'Old Men - and Women - May be Permitted to Speak Long': Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Voice of Experience.

I Ask His Pardon for a Postscript: Byron's Epistolary Afterthoughts (2018)
Book Chapter
Shears. (2018). I Ask His Pardon for a Postscript: Byron's Epistolary Afterthoughts. In Byron and Marginality (291 - 307)

It is arguable that Byron’s letters and journals have never really been on the fringes or margins of our responses to the poet. Those published, albeit in censored form, in Thomas Moore’s Letters and Journals of Lord Byron as early as 1830 made an im... Read More about I Ask His Pardon for a Postscript: Byron's Epistolary Afterthoughts.