It's hard to imagine now the impact that Byron had on European culture. How much he was adored. How much everyone wanted to be like him.
And how deeply his exotic conjurations of the East, The Giaour, The Corsair etc...
Which are now scarcely regarded as his best
How these images permeated early modern consciousness...
And colonialism. How they shaped the understanding of Europeans towards the great, ambiguous, fascinated,evangelising and eroticized project of the white man penetrating the "dark" world of the East and South.
Here's some images from the great Romantic painter Eugene Delacroix to illustrate the above. The images come from Wikimedia Commons.
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