SOURCE: "Byronic Egoism and George Eliot's The Spanish Gypsy," in Neophilologus, Vol. LVII, No. 4, October, 1973, pp. 388-400.

In the following excerpt, Newton asserts that Don Silva, a rebellious character in Eliot's The Spanish Gypsy, is a strong example of a Byronic egoist.

Though almost all critics of George Eliot have recognized her concern with egoism, she is not generally considered among those nineteenth-century writers who were interested in the Byronic egoist, the character who had emerged from Gothic literature and the Sturm und Drang and who came to the greatest prominence in the works of Byron. This figure played an important part in nineteenth-century literature and was used by numerous writers to signify revolt or egoistic aspiration. Perhaps the fundamental attribute of the Byronic egoist is that he refuses to recognize any external source of authority which can define him. He either defies all sources of authority which...