Judaic, Christian, and Islamic mythology in Lord Byron's Hebrew melodies

Abstract EN

Although many Jewish readers and commentators have recognized Lord Byron's Hebrew Melodies as proto-Zionist songs since their composition to the music of the Jewish composer, Isaac Nathan in 1815, there are traces of Christian and Islamic mythology beside the Old Testament that Byron seemed to imitate in his "Songs of Zion".

Some of Byron's lyrics stem from Biblical sources, others are not.

His characters are derived from both the Old and New Testaments, and the atmosphere that he presents, in the Melodies, is realistically and authentically, as many of Byron's scholars have noticed, derivative from the 'Islamic Levant' that he sought for salvation after the failure of his relationship with his conventionally devoted wife, Annabella.