Byron invites these negotiations himself by creating poetic personae that escape intellectual closure with the help of a «deliberate and dialogical disrupter of language and philosophical system» (Larry H. Peer), or by poetic personae that are «portraits of himself, quite as much as being portraits of another historic person» (John Clubbe), Napoleon for one. Always convinced of the superiority of his own (lacrimonious) poetry over Byron’s, Edgar Allan Poe for another, tried to outscore Byron also in ratiocination when he took to tale-writing. Byron’s philosophical practices became the camouflaged protagonist and essential subject matter of his first short story «The Bargain Lost» and continued to feature in most of his later, litigious tales, through «William Wilson», «The Fall of the House of Usher» and beyond.
