Coleridge, Byron and the romantic statesman

This dissertation examines the trope of the romantic statesman in writings by Coleridge and Byron. The work of statesmen was not clearly articulated or defined in the time surrounding Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. Thus, the statesman trope takes on multiple dimensions. This dissertation focuses on Coleridge's The Statesman's Manual and On the Constitution of Church and State, and Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, "The Curse of Minerva," Marino Faliero , and Don Juan. Chapter One provides an examination of the statesman in historical context, from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the 1820s. Chapter Two describes Coleridge's ideal statesman, the figure of recluse genius. Chapter Three explores Coleridge's conception of the clerisy's responsibility as intellectual statesmen. Chapter Four examines the ways in which Byron's orientalism informed his conception of the statesman's image. Chapter Five describes Byron's ideal statesman, the figure of Marino Faliero, a fourteenth-century Venetian prince. Chapter Six explores Byron's conception of diplomacy and its relation to statesmanship in Don Juan. Two literary models emerge from Coleridge's and Byron's statesman tropes: Coleridge's is the prose model of an intellectual pursuit of the idea of the statesman and Byron's is an imaginative and poetical taxonomy of public personalities. The trope of the romantic statesman in writings by Coleridge and Byron provides an important critical lens for examining politics of the period. Together, both models aid in the understanding of a communal romanticism that includes the importance of statecraft, especially at a time when statesmen became increasingly important on a global scale.