Abstract of paper to 49^th International Byron Societies Conference, Pisa, 30 June-06 July 2025

Stags, satire, and similarity: Thomas Hood, The Stag-Eyed Lady, and The Giaour

Steve Wharton, The University of Bath

“Lord Byron-like – he’s not a Bard –

There’s no Romance in that”

Thomas Hood, There’s no Romance in that (1833)

Though Thomas Hood (1799-1845) never met Byron, his teenage years saw him an ardent Byronist. However, as time passed Hood’s eye for satire did not prevent him from occasionally gently mocking Byron’s work, albeit allusively. This can best be observed in his short poem The Stag-Eyed Lady – A Moorish Tale, published in the London Magazine in 1822. It gives a particular take on aspects of The Giaour and Orientalist tropes, reviewing the ottava rima of Beppo and Don Juan to do so. This paper proposes a close reading of Hood’s poem together with points of comparison and contrast in The Giaour, to explore to what extent “Hood’s comic vision of the despotic Ben Ali is…a parodic vision of Byron’s egotism”, as Sara Lodge suggests in her 2007 book on Hood and his works.