ABSTRACT
Mary Shelley configured the Anglo-Italian as a standard of taste and as a strategy of gender distinction, Byron sought to legitimate his purported biculturality on the premises of authenticity and insider knowledge. Byron's immersion in Italianness is articulated – or rather performed — through specific rhetorical strategies. The slippery nature of Byron's mediation between the English and the Italian is not only a formal but a thematic aspect of The Prophecy of Dante. Thus, in a letter to Teresa in January 1820, originally written in Italian, Byron attributes his indecisiveness about the future of their relationship to his 'non-meridian' heart: all of a sudden, Byron realizes that the more he enters into Italianness, the more of a foreigner he feels: What does he want? Byron's pungent remarks reveal his bitter disillusionment and annoyance with his own 'romantic', Shelleyan idealism, rather than his anger towards the insurgents.
