Scarica Lord Byron: The Life and Poetry of a Romantic Hero e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Lord Byron Lord Byron’s personal life was marked by tumultuous love affairs and inappropriate sexual rela onships, unpaid debts, and illegi mate children. A er comple ng his educa on at Cambridge, Lord Byron embarked on a two-year journey across Spain, Portugal, Malta, Albania, and Greece, from which he drew inspira on for Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. A er Byron finalized the separa on from his wife, he le England permanently for Switzerland, where he spent me with the Shelleys. He went on to travel across Italy engaging in promiscuous affairs, wri ng and publishing work along the way. He spent six years in Italy, where he wrote and released Don Juan. In 1823, Lord Byron was asked to assist in the Greek War of Independence from the O oman Empire . He sold his estate in England to raise money for the Greek cause, part of which he used to enable a fleet of ships to sail to Missolonghi, where he planned to help a ack the Turks. While in Turkey, Lord Byron contracted a fever and died at the age of 36. His heart was removed and buried in Missolonghi, and his body was returned to England. His burial at Westminster Abbey was denied, so Byron was buried in his family tomb in Newstead. He was deeply mourned in England and in Greece. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes’’ Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was the poem whose publica on caused Byron to remark, “I awoke one morning and found myself famous.” Published in 1812, it did indeed bring him fame and literary renown. Fortunately, Byron was preternaturally self-aware and he greeted his newfound celebrity with amusement. Childe was the medieval tle for a young squire about to take his vows of knighthood. It describes the travels and reflec ons of a world-weary young man, who is disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry and looks for distrac on in foreign lands. In a wider sense, it is an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a genera on weary of the wars of the post-Revolu onary and Napoleonic eras. The poem is wri en in the “Spenserian Stanza”, the verse form of Edmund Spenser ’s Elizabethan epic, The Faerie Queene. Spenserian Stanzas are perhaps the most self-consciously literary form to use, consis ng of eight iambic pentameter lines followed by one alexandrine (which is a 12-syllable iambic line). In canto II there’s a first person narrator, in the other cantos there’s an external narrator. The poem is made up of 4 cantos, 9 lines each. Content Harold is impa ent to start living his new adventure. He’s excited and feels comfortable far from home, immersed in nature. He doesn’t seem to be nostalgic or hesitant. He welcomes the strength and power of the ocean that as a steed will lead him to his next des na on. He doesn’t know where he’s going. He follows the weaves’ guidance and swi ly he goes wherever they bring him. He compares himself to a weed dri ing with the waves (carried by the de or by the wind). Stanza II is pervaded by a sense of freedom, every element symbolizes liberty, wildness, unpredictability. Harold prefers to be in nature because, as he said in stanza XV (last stanza), when he is in a man’s dwelling and not in nature, he changes. He feels like his freedom has been denied and he explains it by repor ng the example of a falcon that cannot fly anymore.
