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Taking a fresh approach to Byron, this book argues that he should be understood as a poet whose major works develop a carefully reasoned philosophy. Situating him with reference to the thought of the period, it argues for Byron as an active thinker, whose final philosophical stance - reader-centred scepticism - has extensive practical implications.

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Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction Philosophies, Skepticism, and Morals: The Background in Enlightenment Travelling on Stony Ground: Childe Harold I and II and the Beginning of Byronic Knowing Worse than Faithless: Plenitude and the Loss of Knowledge in The Giaour Talking Turkey: Unmasking Knowledge in the Last of the Eastern Tales Travelling on Stormy Seas: Childe Harold III and the Difficulties of Development Knowing on Demand: Staging Knowledge-Claims in Manfred´s ´Mental Theatre´´A lively reader´s fancy does the rest´: Don Juan and the Certainty of Doubt Reckoning Up Notes Works Cited Index

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´As a record of philosophical work done in the course of Byron´s poetic career Bernhard Jackson´s book succeeds in reaffirming the exuberance of the poet´s misgivings.´ - TLS

´Bernard Jackson provides a new approach to understanding Bryon´s philosophical development - one that is sympathetic to the poet´s oft-maligned intellectual powers...contributes to larger conversations about the function of poetry and reading in the nineteenth century and provides readers with material for future scholarly investigations of the poet´s skepticism.´ - Review 19

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EMILY A. BERNHARD JACKSON is Assistant Professor of Nineteenth-Century British Literature at the University of Arkansas, USA, and a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge, UK. She has written essays on Byron and on Edmund Spenser, as well as the introduction for the Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Age of Romanticism.

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