Perhaps no work of Byron’s is more relentlessly challenging to a reader’s understanding than Manfred. The poem’s most notorious biographical resonance – the “real-world” identity of Astarte – indexes its striking array of provocative or enigmatic passages that force readers to a troubled sympathy with Manfred’s tormented mind and world. At the same time, the “medley style” of the work, mixing the poetics of dark Romanticism with unexpected satiric and farcical turns, initiated Byron’s breakthrough into poetic practices of unusual, even shocking, technical range and expressive virtuosity.