George Gordon Byron, The Two Foscari

Adam White (The Open University)

Ed. by Daniel Robinson, Widener University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.06: English Writing and Culture of the Romantic Period, 1789-1837.
Vol. editors: Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Daniel Robinson (Widener University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1821

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Play

Resources

The Two Foscari is, along with Mario Faliero, one of Byron’s two Venetian dramas. The former work was composed over a short period of time and published with Cain and Sardanapalus in December 1821. The Two Foscari shares with Sardanapalus (and with a number of Byron’s early lyric poems) the themes of ancestry, family, and honour. Like Byron’s narrative poem “The Prisoner of Chillon”, The Two Foscari is, on a number of levels, a study of the effects of imprisonment and confinement, while the larger arc of the play’s narrative is its dramatisation of the often secretive and complex political machinery of the fifteenth-century Venetian Republic. In The Two Foscari Byron …

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3266 words

Citation: White, Adam. "The Two Foscari". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 February 2015 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7999, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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