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All Outputs (15)

The Byronic Hero: Independence, Comradeship and Community (2025)
Journal Article
Shears, J. (2025). The Byronic Hero: Independence, Comradeship and Community. Byron Journal, 52(2), 151-166. https://doi.org/10.3828/bj.2024.17

The Byronic Hero is a Romantic byword for gloomy isolation, alienation, introspection and aloofness and these features have been well documented. However, some of Byron’s tales and drama which include Byronic Heroes – such as The Bride of Abydos , Th... Read More about The Byronic Hero: Independence, Comradeship and Community.

'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.

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.

In One We Shall Be Slower: Byron, Retribution and Forgiveness (2017)
Journal Article
Shears, J. (2017). In One We Shall Be Slower: Byron, Retribution and Forgiveness. Christianity and Literature, 193-212. https://doi.org/10.1177/0148333116645609

While Byron is a poet often associated with feelings of resentment and anger, he is usually marginalized when it comes to the topic of forgiveness in the Romantic period. If forgiveness is debated in Byron then it is usually dominated by the suspicio... Read More about In One We Shall Be Slower: Byron, Retribution and Forgiveness.