''The Siege of Corinth'' is a

rhyme A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic ...

tragic Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy i ...

narrative poem Narrative poetry is a form of poetry that tells a story, often using the voices of both a narrator and characters; the entire story is usually written in metered verse. Narrative poems do not need rhyme. The poems that make up this genre may be ...

Lord Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the ...

. Published in 1816 by John Murray in London with the poem ''Parisina'', it was inspired by the Ottoman massacre of the Venetian garrison holding the

Acrocorinth Acrocorinth ( el, Ακροκόρινθος), "Upper Corinth", the acropolis of ancient Corinth, is a monolithic rock overseeing the ancient city of Corinth, Greece. In the estimation of George Forrest, "It is the most impressive of the acropolis ...

in 1715 – an incident in the Ottoman reconquest of the Morea during the Ottoman-Venetian Wars.

Overview

(Venice) Bocca di Leone in the Doge's Palace

Byron recounts the final, desperate resistance of the Venetians on the day the Ottoman army stormed Acrocorinth: revealing the closing scenes of the conflict through the eyes of Alp (a Venetian renegade fighting for the Ottomans) and Francesca (the beautiful maiden daughter of the governor of the Venetian garrison:

Minotti {{for, the surname, Minotti (surname) Minotti was a Governor of Corinth, then under the power of the Doge. In 1715 the city was stormed by the Turks, and during the siege one of the magazines in the Turkish camp blew up, killing 600 men. Byron says ...

). Alp – whose impassioned suit for Francesca's hand had been previously refused by Minotti – had later fled the Venetian Empire after being falsely denounced by anonymous accusers via the infamous "Lion's Mouth" at the Doge's palace (see insert). Enlisting under the Turkish flag, he repudiates both his nationality and his religion, as well as his old name 'Lanciotto', only to be challenged by Francesca herself the night before the final assault to repent his apostasy, to forgive his accusers, and to save the Venetian garrison from certain slaughter. Alp's ensuing moral dilemma: viz. to forgive those who unjustly accused him and save the lives of his enemies; or to prosecute his revenge on Venice using all the Turkish forces under his command – forms the climax of the unfolding drama as the battle between the Ottomans and the Venetians presses to its conclusion.Byron, George Gordon. ''The Poems of Lord Byron''. London: Oxford University Press, 1945. pp. 325–326.

References

Sources

* Drucker, Peter. 'Byron and Ottoman love: Orientalism, Europeanization and same sex sexualities in the early nineteenth-century Levant' (Journal of European Studies vol. 42 no. 2, June 2012, 140–57). * Garrett, Martin: ''George Gordon, Lord Byron''. (British Library Writers' Lives). London: British Library, 2000. . * Garrett, Martin. ''Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Byron''. Palgrave, 2010. . * Guiccioli, Teresa, contessa di, ''Lord Byron's Life in Italy'', transl. Michael Rees, ed. Peter Cochran, 2005, . * Grosskurth, Phyllis: ''Byron: The Flawed Angel''. Hodder, 1997. . * McGann, Jerome: ''Byron and Romanticism''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. . * Oueijan, Naji B. ''A Compendium of Eastern Elements in Byron's Oriental Tales''. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1999. * Rosen, Fred: ''Bentham, Byron and Greece''.

Clarendon Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, Oxford, 1992. .

External links

''The Siege of Corinth''
full text at the

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Siege of Corinth (Poem), The Poetry by Lord Byron 1816 poems Historical poems Ottoman–Venetian Wars John Murray (publishing house) books