Scarica Lord Byron - vita, opere e il byronic hero e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! LORD BYRON Lord because he was an aristocrat. He is the most popular English romantic poet also in his time, he was the best known. First of all because he traveled a lot and also because he embodied the romantic ideals, he was the romantic hero. He was rich and handsome, even if he was lame (zoppo), but despite of his physical handicap he was very handsome and successful with women. He was an unconventional aristocrat. His parents were wild people, they had lead a dissolute life and he was like them. But when he was a child he had a governess like all noble children, and she was a Puritan Calvinist. She had a very strict moral vision, and she influenced the child. So on the one hand he was like his parents, he was a wild boy, on the other he was influenced by Puritan ideas of his governess. This made of him a very tormented man, restless. He lived a life with a sense of guilt and predestination. He created heroes like him, he created the Byronic hero: the typical romantic hero that was modeled on himself and on his own life and feelings. This is very important because the Byronic hero will influence many other authors, for example the Brontë sisters. It's a kind of hero that has arrived to us, we still like heroes of this kind. He studied at Cambridge university where he lead a dissolute life, he used to gamble and to drink, but he was also a brilliant student and he started writing poetry. When he left university like all young English noble men he went to the Grand Tour: a journey all over Europe that all young noble men experienced, it was a part of their formation. So he traveled a lot and this is important because he would later write about these travels in his akin works, especially in his poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, that is perhaps his most important romantic poem. But also in his poem Don Juan which is a satirical poet so it's not romantic. He published Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812 when he came back to England and it was very successful. He became a very famous poet. He was also very successful with women, he had a lot of affairs and natural children. One of the women he had loved described him as "bad, mad and dangerous". But in 1815 he got married. His marriage lasted one year only because of his relationship with his half sister, an incestuous relationship, so he was surrounded by scandals who made him leave England in 1816 never to return. He also had a lot of debts because he wasted his money. He went to Switzerland, he was I'm the group of poets that was in Switzerland with Shelley. Then he moved to Venice and than to Milan as well. In Italy he joined the Carbonari movement, because he was a rebel, against pressures, so he was involved in the patriotic fights against the Austrians. Then he went with Shelley to Pisa, where Shelley died. Then he went to Greece to fight against the Turks for independence. Then in Greece he died. His death was considered a heroic death but he was not killed in the battle, he got ill and he died of marsh fever (malaria). In Greece he was regarded as a national hero, and his heart was buried in Greece while the rest of his body was buried in England in the family tomb. Lord Byron was the most famous English romantic poet, even if he didn't consider himself a romantic poet. First of all because he traveled a lot, also because he created the typical romantic hero, and he embodied it. He was the only English romantic poet to achieve a European reputation, so he influenced other European authors like Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Goethe, Balzac, and the Brontë sisters in their novels.
