Alice Levine, the 2014 Ericksen Scholar and professor emerita of English at Hofstra University, will give an upcoming lecture on Byron at Linfield College. She will present “Cutting and Slashing Byron’s Poetry: Editing the Selected Works” on Tuesday, Nov. 4, at 7 p.m. in the Austin Reading Room in Nicholson Library.
Notorious for his dangerous but attractive heroes, Byron has been seen as a model for anti-heroes as diverse as Dr. Frankenstein, Mr. Rochester, Heathcliff and Dracula. His later poetry moves beyond the gothic mode into satire and comic commentary, “meant to be a little quietly facetious about everything.”
Levine’s research focuses on English Romantic poetry. She has published numerous articles about Lord Byron, including studies of musical settings of his poetry. She edited Byron’s Poetry and Prose Norton Critical Edition,” co-edited “Rereading Byron: Essays Selected from Hofstra University’s Byron Bicentennial Conference,” as well as “Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics: A Facsimile of Manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library, Volumes I-IV.” She currently sits on the boards of the Byron Society of America and the Keats-Shelley Association of America.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Ken and Donna Ericksen Endowed English Department Fund. Ericksen, professor emeritus of English at Linfield, created the endowment in memory of his wife, Donna, a Linfield alumna, who taught reading, writing and English in the Hillsboro School District for 25 years. The endowment allows the English Department to bring literary scholars to campus for several days to work with faculty and students.
