Auden-Byron Parallel: Lord Byron’s Don Juan as Intertext in W. H. Auden’s Travel Writing

ABSTRACT

This paper is aimed at examining Lord Byron’s popularity among one of the modernist poets, W. H. Auden. For all of the comparisons that can be drawn between Lord Byron and W. H. Auden, there is little in criticism that interprets their connection in travel writing. Drawing on Don Juan and Auden’s two travel books as the texts, the author of the paper finds that despite the differences in social and cultural context, both of them are endowed with literary experiments, fresh new perspectives and spiritual exploration granted by travel. Travel shapes their poetics as well as politics. Through travel and writing, they challenge the norm and tradition, and yet Auden exhibits creativity in dealing with travel in the modernist period. In surveying the intertextuality of their travel writing, the author of the paper gains a sense of both their originality and traditionary indebtedness.