Assoc. Professor Clara Tuite presented a plenary lecture at the recent 44th International Byron conference

Wheels on Fire: Byronic Roma Antica and the Gypsy Flash

3 July 2018

Assoc. Professor Clara Tuite (the University of Melbourne)

Plenary lecture, 44th International Byron Conference, 'Improvisation and Mobility', Ravenna, Italy.

Writing in Genoa, in October 1822, Byron arrives in London with Juan, in Don Juan Canto XI, in the company of Tom the highwayman, who Juan shoots dead, in "full flash." This talk explores the flash - a customary language of gypsies and thieves made-over in the Regency as a fashionable language and sociable style - as an exemplary mode of Byronic mobility and improvisation. It considers relations between flash and the secret society of the Carbonari (charcoal burners), the Italian revolutionary movement that developed from Enlightenment freemasonry and that Byron participated in while living in Ravenna during the failed Carbonari insurrection of early 1821.

Image: A Carbonari flag (Byron was rumoured to have waved one from his balcony in Ravenna.)