Thomas Sclafani

Thomas Sclafani is a Literature major. He will be presenting his senior project, titled “A League of Extraordinary Byrons: The Poet’s Many Embodied Selves as Vehicles of Anxious Rebellion”. In this project, Thomas pursues characters in four of Lord Byron’s major works, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Don Juan, Manfred, and Cain, locating characters in each text that embody aspects of the poets multifaceted self. He finds that these characters communicate Byron’s anxiety towards subjects such as public image, categorization, impermanence, and imperialism. Each of these subjects are indicative of a structure imposed on the Byronic hero that he struggles to break loose from, however these texts reveal that transgression of these structures is not easy or without great personal anguish on the part of the characters and the poet.