Scarica Lord Byron: vita, opere e caratteristiche del Byronic hero e più Dispense in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Lord Byron Early life and Grand Tour George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born in London in 1788. In Cambridge he won a reputation for drinking, gambling, and as a lover, freely spending huge sums of money. In 1809 Byron set out on a tour which included Portugal, Spain, Malta, Greece, Albania, and modern Turkey. While on the tour he wrote the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage that were a huge success. He himself said: “I awoke one morning and found myself famous”. Child Harold and the “oriental tales” His works are tales of love and adventure, set in exotic lands, with a simple plot based on contrasted love, death, and revenge. Their heroes are proud and never bending to social requirements, they were thought to be like their author, because of this the term “Byronic hero”. The Byron scandal and the Italian years His wife accused him of mental cruelty and ill treatment, moreover she discovered Byron’s passion for his half-sister. Because of this scandal he was forced to leave England and would never return. In Italy Byron became a supporter of the society of the Carbonari. Death in Greece He had been one of the most influential voices in favour of the independence of Greece from Turks and became one of the leaders of the revolution. One year later he died. To this day Byron is considered a national hero in Greece. The Byronic hero Byron embodied the aspirations of freedom and the hate of social hypocrisy, he was the incarnation of the Romantic hero: bold, impetuous, and proud. There are many autobiographical elements in this portrait, since it corresponds to the self- image that Byron spent his whole life trying to create: a proud individualist, a non- conformist, an indomitable rebel. Byron the romantic traits His life: he was aristocrat and handsome; His rebellion against any form of oppression; His titanism, his satanism, his individualism; His appreciation of nature. Augustan and Romantic traits Byron’s models were the Augustan writers. His works can be defined as Romantic in spirit and content, but neoclassical in form. Social satire: Don Juan Don Juan is Byron’s masterpiece. Byron changes the Don Juan of the original Spanish legend (a cynical adventurer who builds hid fortunes on his cunning and sexual prowess) into a naive man to whom the most extraordinary things happen. The poem was to offer “a satire on the abuses of the present state of society”. Don Juan consists of 16 cantos written in ottava rima (8-line rhymed stanza). In it he satirizes individuals, social codes, and governments. The story is intentionally picaresque. The poem opens in Seville with the 16 years old Juan discovering love in the arms of Donna Julia, who is married to a much older man. Scandal breaks out and Juan must leave Spain. He is shipwrecked on a Greek island, where he is looked after by Haidée, the daughter of the pirate Lambro, who finds out about the two lovers and sends Juan away on a ship for Istanbul, where he is sold as a slave. After other adventures in Istanbul and in Russia, Juan ends up in England, where openly became a disguise for Byron himself.
