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GEORGE GORDON BYRON (1788-1824) - Coggle Diagram
GEORGE GORDON BYRON
(1788-1824)
LIFE
unconventional aristocrat
deformed foot
1809: Grand Tour (Portugal, Spain, Malta, Albania, Greece, Middle East)
1815: He married Annabella Milbanke
1816: Collapse of the marriage because of his incestous relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh
1816: He left England forever
In Geneva he became friend of
Percy Bysshe Shelley
1817: He moved to Venice
1819: He moved to Milan and became involved in the plots against Austrians
He reached Shelley in Pisa, but soon his friend died
He devoted to the Greek struggle of independence from Turkey and organised an expedition in Missolonghi, where he died because of a severe fever
his heart is buried in Greece but his body is in the family tomb in England
WORKS
Hours of Idleness
(1807)
volume of lyric poems
attacked by the
Edinburgh review
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
satyrical reply to the critics
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
1812 (2 first cantos)
published after the France tour, made him a celebrity
The Giaour, The Corsair, Lara
a series of verse narratives with exotic settings and about foreign customs
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
(3rd canto)
written in Geneva
Manfred
(1817)
tragedy written in Venice
Beppo
(1818)
mock-eroic poem
Don Juan
(1819-24)
mock-epic poem considered his masterpiece
LITERATURE
he never considered himself a Romantic poet
he criticised Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats
but he was the only poet to achieve a European reputation
He influenced:
Dostoevsky
Goethe
Pushkin
Balzac
INDIVIDUALISM
he believed in individual liberty and fought against tyrants
he denounced the evils of society through the wit and satire of his poems
he was an isolated man
nature for him was a source of consolation and joy, but without any message to convey
STYLE
18th-century poetic diction
Romantic themes
Neoclassical influence in the satirical aim of his poetry
THE BYRONIC HERO
A proud individualist man who rejects the conventional rules of the society
passionate, restless, with some horrible secret in his past
isolated but attractive, noble but wild
sensible to nature and beauty, suffering, rebellious, erotic
MANFRED. A DRAMATIC POEM
PLOT:
A metaphysical poem because it explored cosmic relationships
Characters; spirits of the earth, air, waters
the hero: Manfred, a magician tormented by remorse (the cause of which is left half unexplained)
He invokes the spirits and they appear to him but they are of no use, so he goes to the residence of the Evil Principle to evocate a ghost, who gives him an ambiguous and disagreeable answer
3rd act: moment of crisis while dying in a tower. His guilt gave him the power to explore the secrets of the universe
Ending:
fragmentation of his personality
and
loss of identity
, he decides to commit suicide
SETTING:
the Alps
Manfred's castle
Manfred's tower is the symbol of the overreacher
the mountains
THE HERO
embodiment of the Byronic hero
elements taken from:
Milton
the Gothic novel
the myth of Faust
the figure of Cain
Promethean play
free will of the hero, who wants to dominate natural elements
STYLE
Original structure: the work begins near the ending of an action never fully described to underline the enigmatic character of Manfred
Manfred is the narrator, even though he never reveals the nature of his pain
Byron also uses a
shifting point of view
through the other characters' perspectives on Manfred: a chamois-hunter, the spirits, the abbot and his defendants
He leaves gaps and implies events to give the reader the
sense of exclusion
that the hero is experiencing
OPENING LINES
The lamp must be replenished, but even then it will not burn so long as I must watch: my slumbers if I slumber - are not sleep, but a continuance of enduring thought...