Formation of Italian Identity in Byron's Childe Harold IV and Beppo

Byron's travels across Italy in the summer and Autumn of 1817 exposed him to a discourse on Italian identity he could not help but engage with. Exiled from England due to immense debt, Byron's creative passions fuelled travels that put him into constant contact with the Italian national identity. His resultant literary expression was grounded in the exploration of Italy's tension between past and present. The fourth entry in the travelogue Childe Harold and the satirical Beppo were inspired by the trip, conceived in quick succession and published in 1818. Despite antithetical styles of the brooding Childe Harold and the comic Venetian carnival, Byron imbued both works with a preoccupation on defining national identity. By examining the formation of Italian cultural identity in these two works, this essay will argue that for Byron, Italy's was an aged classical ideal that needed rejuvenating with polycultural modern thinking.