Lord Byron and the Romantic Poets: A Study of Byron's Life and Literary Impact, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Lord Byron and the Romantic Poets: A Study of Byron's Life and Literary Impact e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! II GENERATION The Romantic poet shows the rebellious character against institutions, the oppression that the world causes in the lives of individuals. In the first generation we have seen a more systematic study, a theorization of what is poetry and the role of the poet, while the poets of the second generation are interested in these issues but with their lives (especially Byron and Shelley) will be the example of people who will fight against what are the conventions, against the negative aspects of society especially in what is related to the freedom of the individual. The poets of the second generation are: Byron, Shelley, Keats. They all died young and their bodies were buried far from their countries. The first Romantic poet of the second generation is Lord Byron. LORD BYRON George Gordon, Baron Byron, was born in 1788. He was an unconventional aristocrat. Although he was wealthy and handsome, he had a handicap, a deformed foot, but he strove to become proficient in physical sports. He began writing poetry; in 1807 he published Hours of Idleness, a small volume of lyrics, which was attacked by the Edinburgh Review. Byron responded with English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, where he showed his taste for satire. In 1809 he went on his Grand Tour where he collected the experiences that gave rise to the first two songs of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, which he published after his return to England in 1812. The songs were so successful that Byron became famous, and his fame grew when he published The Giaour, The Corsair, and Lara, which liked the public very much, given their exotic settings. In 1815 Byron married Annabella Milbanke, but the marriage broke down one year because of Byron's relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh. Surrounded by scandal and debt, he left England in 1816 never to return. He lived in Geneva, where he became close friends with Percy Bysshe Shelley and wrote the third canto of the Childe Harold. He then moved to Venice, where he produced the tragedy Manfred (1817), the fourth and final canto of the Childe Harold (1818), the mock- heroic poem Beppo (1818), and began his masterpiece, the mock-epic Don Juan. In 1819 he moved to Milan, where he became involved against Austrian rule, and finally went to Pisa to join Shelley. After Shelley's death he became involved in the struggle for Greek independence from Turkey. He organized an expedition and devoted himself to training troops at Missolonghi, where he died in 1824, stricken with a severe fever. His heart is buried in Greece but his body is in the family tomb in England. Although Byron never considered himself a Romantic poet and criticized Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats, he was the only poet of his era to have European fame and influence on other writers. Byron's individualism Byron believed in individual freedom (this he shared with Shelley, he thought he was free to go away, Shelley would write a work Prometheus Unbond against all forms of tyranny) and detested any kind of constraint. He wanted to live without compromise and wanted all men to be free, so he went to fight against tyrants. (in Milan against the Austrians and in Greece against the Turks). He denounced the evils of society by using the clever style of 18th-century poetry to convey a satirical focus. There is always an isolated man whose feelings are reflected in the wildest exotic natural landscapes. Nature is not a source of consolation and joy (as it was for Wordsworth), doesn’t it embody any theory or have any message to convey. Byron's style Byron continued to refer to eighteenth-century poetic diction in terms of style, even when his themes were Romantic. The influence of neoclassical poetry can also be seen in the satirical intent of most of his poems. The Byronic hero The Byronic hero is a passionate, moody, restless, and mysterious man who hides some sin or secret in his past. He is characterized by 'individualism and rejection of society's moral rules. He is an outsider, isolated and attractive at the same time. He is of noble birth, but wild and rough in his ways; his looks are hard, but handsome. He has a great feeling for nature and beauty, but is bored with the excesses of the world. Women cannot resist him, but he rejects their love; men admire or envy him. It is unclear whether his life made him think of that hero or whether he thought of that ideal hero and modeled his life on him, the only thing certain is that there are many similarities between the Byronic hero and Byron himself. CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE First of the works that gives him important fame. The poem consists of four independent parts written at different times in his life. In 1809 when he went on his Grand Tour he collected experiences and these gave rise to the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, which he published after his return to England in 1812. The cantos were so successful that Byron became a literary and social celebrity. Surrounded by scandal and debt, he left England and moved to Geneva, where he wrote the third canto of the Childe Harold. He then moved to Venice, where the fourth and final canto of Childe Harold (1818). Unity is provided by the protagonist, Harold, a young nobleman awaiting knighthood (Childe' denotes him) who travels. Harold's boredom and disillusionment with life drive him to leave England and give Byron the opportunity to introduce picturesque and exotic settings. (Exotic understood as distant). The first two cantos are set in Spain, Portugal, Albania and Greece; they evoke the glorious past and the famous monuments and landscapes of these countries. In the third canto Byron addresses the possibilities opened up by the human capacity to forget. Byron does so by experiencing his own ability to become absorbed in imaginative creativity and attraction to the natural world, both of which give him a new vitality. (Reflecting by isolating himself from the rest on what themes nature can offer.) The canto follows Byron's journey, after leaving England in 1816, to Waterloo camp, along the Rhine River and into Switzerland. The fourth canto, set in Italy, contains several descriptions of nature, especially the sea, depicted as an image of the sublime and eternity. Nature reflects the mood of the poet as in Daffodils, however, there is a difference. Whereas in Daffodils it is the poet who shares the joy of nature through recollection in tranquility, in this poem, on the other hand, nature seems to reflect his state of mind. Canto Four is also reminiscent of Shelley's Ode to the Western Wind in its setting and choice of place. The Ode to the Western Wind is similarly written and set in Italy and speaks of the effects of nature. Moreover, the sublime is present here, which is also present in Shelley especially when talking about the action of the wind on the ocean, and there is a difference between the beautiful and the sublime. DON JUAN Don Juan consists of sixteen cantos written in octave rhyme, an 8-line verse in rhyme. Byron took it on loan from Luigi Pulci's Morgante Maggiore. Byron satirizes individuals, social codes, and governments as the poem follows Don Juan on his many extraordinary adventures. With Don Juan Byron produced his masterpiece. He felt free to write as if he were speaking to his friends. This does not mean that the poem is colloquial instead the satirical effect is achieved precisely through language of classical elegance. Byron transforms the Don Juan of the original Spanish legend-a cynical adventurer who builds his fortune on his cunning and sexual adventures-into a naive young man to whom the most extraordinary things happen. Through Don Juan's adventures, Byron is able to present the follies of his era without being limited by considerations of plot probability. The poem was criticized at the time because it was considered lacking in morality. Byron's intention was to offer "a satire on the abuses of the present state of society," particularly the lack of loyalty, sincerity, love and compassion. THE STORY = The story is episodic and picaresque: the flow of Don Juan's adventures matters more than their chronological sequence. The poem opens in Seville, with 16-year-old Juan discovering love in the arms of the beautiful Donna Julia, married to a much older man. A scandal breaks out and Juan must leave Spain. He is shipwrecked and landed on a Greek island, where he is cared for by Haidée, the daughter of the pirate Lambro. The pirate discovers the two lovers and has Juan board a ship bound for Istanbul, where Juan will be sold into slavery. After further adventures in an Istanbul harem and then at the Russian court (where Tsarina Catherine the Great falls in love with him), Juan ends up in England. The last few cantos are devoted to his English adventures, and Don Juan is openly a subtle disguise for Byron himself.