Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here. This lecture is about the life and work of Lord Byron. It is free to all readers and listeners; if you enjoy it, please consider a paid subscription. Contents: Byron’s brief and dramatic life; the long afterlife of his “Byronic hero” in high literature, popular culture, and radical philosophy; Romantic gnosticism, idealism, incest, and gender in Byron’s dramatic poem Manfred; Byron’s epic Don Juan as anti-Romantic manifesto; and the decomposition of the epic into other modes and genres under the pressure of modern individualism and atomization. Please enjoy—and please subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the lecture can be downloaded here: This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com/subscribe