Introduction: ‘Un paese tutto poetico’ – Byron in Italy, Italy in Byron

The connection between Byron and Italy is one of the most familiar facts about British Romanticism.1 The poet’s many pronouncements about the country (where he lived between 1816 and 1823), its history, culture and people, as well as about his own experiences in Italy and among Italians, are well known and part of his legend. More particularly, Byron’s debauchery in Venice and would-be heroics in Ravenna are often known even to those acquainted with the poet’s biography only in its most simplified versions. In contrast, though the critical panorama has been changing in recent years, serious attention to Byron’s literary engagement with Italy has tended to be discontinuous. Yet he wrote much of his greatest poetry in Italy, and under its influence, poetry that would have a profound bearing not only on the literature but also the wider culture, history and politics of the whole of Europe, and not least Italy itself....