Introduction

Byron and the politics of freedom and terror

Matthew A. Green

Piya Pal-Lapinski

pp. 1-14

in: Matthew A. Green, Piya Pal-Lapinski (eds), Byron and the politics of freedom and terror, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Abstract

Why, at the very height of desire and human pleasure,—worldly, social, amorous, ambitious or even avaricious,—does there mingle a certain sense of doubt and sorrow—a fear of what is to come—a doubt of what is … I am not sure that Fear is not a pleasurable sensation; at least, Hope is; and what Hope is there without a deep leaven of Fear?1