Journal

Saturday, April 13, 2002
Well, this is simultaneously a question and a bit of shameless self-promotion (and I'm subjecting myself to the risk of writing about living authors instead of dead ones who can't tell me how wrong I am!). You described Dream as Byronic at least once; to what extent did you consciously conceive of him as a type of Byronic hero?

He fits the profile of the Byronic hero very closely. And here's where the shameless self-promotion comes in. I've written an article on Byronic heroes in popular culture (a miniature version of an as yet unpublished book on the topic), and Dream is one of the heroes discussed. It's at http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/contemporary/stein/stein.html if you have the time and inclination to check it out.


Er, quite consciously. At least as a variation on a theme. When one plays with archetypes one should know what the archetypes are one is playing with.