Flirting with the Muse of Thomas Moore

Abstract

‘Mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different’, T. S. Eliot wrote. If Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered , Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso , and John Hookham Frere’s Pulci imitation Whistlecraft influenced Don Juan ’s style, Thomas Moore’s Fudge Family in Paris was also determinative in subtle ways. Byron transformed Moore’s epistolary Fudge Family into vernacular ottava rima . Moore’s poem about the sweetness and sourness of post-Napoleonic Europe (fudge, cherries, banquets) is also remarkable for its blending of Judaic themes (clothing, feasts, and appetites), motifs that appear in Byron’s allusions to Psalm 137 (‘If I forget thee’) as well as Julia’s letter in Canto II of Don Juan . Recent scholarship on food and food studies provides insight into Moore’s poem. Roland Barthes’ psychosociology of food, for example, can be applied to Byron’s ‘poetics of spice’ as adumbrated by Timothy Morton, thereby enhancing our appreciation of Byron’s satire of consumption and Moore’s influence upon it.