Alan Rawes

I came to Manchester in September 2005, having previously taught at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow (1997-2001) and Canterbury Christ Church University in Kent (2001-2005). I studied as an undergraduate and postgraduate at the University of Liverpool.

MAIN RESEARCH INTERESTS

LORD BYRON

My principal research interest is Lord Byron, especially in relation to European Romanticism and, currently, particularly in relation to Italy. I am the author of Byron's Poetic Experimentation (Ashgate, 2000) and numerous essays on Byron in The Keats-Shelley Journal, The Byron Journal, The Cambridge Companion to Byron, The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature, European Romantic Review and other journals and books. I was the editor of The Byron Journal between 2005 and 2012, and have spoken on Byron at international conferences in the UK, the US and Europe. I have also organised a number of international Byron conferences in the UK and Italy. I am currently Joint President of the International Association of Byron Societies and sit on the Executive Committee of the London Byron Society.

My recent and ongoing work on Byron focuses very much on the poet's engagement with Italy and Italian literature. I have published essays and/or presented papers on Byron's translation of Pulci, his relation to the Risorgimento, Alfieri's influence on Byron's plays, Byron's 'lyric' Rome and his reputation in Venice while living there. In 2013 I also co-edited a special issue of Literaria Pragensia on 'Byron in Italy' and in 2017 I co-edited Byron and Italy (Manchester University Press) with Professor Diego Saglia of Parma University. I am currently working on a monograph provisionally called The Napoleon of Rhyme: Byron's Literary Conquest of Italy and co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron with Jonathon Shears of Keele University.

OTHER RESEARCH INTERESTS

I have further research interests across European Romantic-period literature, as well as in poetic form, Romantic (auto)biography, literary inter-relations between the four nations of the UK in the Romantic period, Romantic constructions of Britishness and literary influence, particularly across national cultures. My main publications in these areas include Reading, Writing and the Influence of Harold Bloom (Manchester University Press, 2010), Romanticism and Form (Palgrave, 2007), Romantic Biography (Ashgate, 2003), English Romanticism and the Celtic World (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and essays on Burns's reputation in Italy, Byron and Pushkin and P. B. Shelley's rhyme schemes.

Supervision areas:

I would welcome PhD proposals in any of area of Romanticism Studies, but especially projects relating British Romantic-period writers to European culture.