RETURN TO POESIA (FIRST PAPER)
1.
Introduction (by Julia
Fernández Chiva and Beatriz Lasala Díaz)
2.
Influences on Byron (by Josué Álvarez Conejos and Paola Enguix Fernández)
2.1. Familiar
influences
2.2. Childhood
influences
2.3. Influence
of his education
2.4. Influence
of his travels
2.5. Contextual
influences
2.6.
Bibliography used
3.
Byron’s characteristics and examples (by Jéssica
Aguilar Viñoles and Cristina Camps Pérez)
Some writers
and critics say Byron is the most spectacular personality in all literature. In
his poems, Byron shows the vigour of the movement displayed in his demands for
freedom, for liberalism, and for unrestrained individualism. Moreover, thee
subject which was foremost in Byron’s work is “himself”. Such
exhibitionism seems understandable mainly as compensation for his physical
affliction.
Byron
shows all his feelings and expresses them with some opposite tendencies such as
cruelty and benevolence, sincerity and posturing, seriousness and flippancy,
rationalism and Romantic illusion, conformity and revolt, courage and
self-pity, faith and cynicism.
The Byronic hero (so
named because Lord Byron used to present a very similar character in his writings
in the late 18th and early 19th century) is one of the most prominent literary
character types of the Romantic period. Romantic heroes represent an important
tradition in British literature. In England, some authors focused on Lord Byron
and, a large number of Gothic novels and dramas, all contain a protagonist who
is a Byronic hero. (http://www.poeticbyway.com/xbyron.htm)
Byron shows a hero
who expresses sensitivity: his heroes are "titans" (figures of vast
proportion; god-like) wrestling desperately with a cruel world of men but torn
more deeply by an unnamed inner taint that galls the heroes more terribly than
even the world does.
The first version of
Byron's hero appears in the opening stanzas of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,
canto 1, written in 1812 when the author was 21. At this stage, the Byronic
hero is rather crudely depicted as a young man, prematurely sated by sin, who
wanders about in an attempt to escape society and his own memories:
Apart he stalk'd in joyless reverie,
And from his native land resolv'd to go,
And visit scorching climes beyond the sea;
With pleasure drugg'd he almost long'd for woe, . . .
(2.565, lines 50–53)
The immediate
precedents for Byron's dark and troubled heroes are found in the protagonists
of the Gothic terror novels of the later eighteenth century. For example, the
Italian Schedoni (Ann Radcliffe's The
Italian, 1797) embodies many of the sinister and terrifying aspects of Milton's
Satan. An equally powerful influence on Byron was the towering historical
figure of Napoleon Bonaparte, who seemed to combine sinfulness with superhuman
power and grandeur.
A pair af these
opposite tendencies, rationalism and Romantic illusion, that Byron used to
express his feelings, are shown in Ann Radcliffe’s novel The Mysteries of
Udolpho (1794). In which, Emily St. Aubert, the heroine, is tried as she is
incarcerated in the villainous Montoni’s dark castle, in which she manages to
rise to each new challenge with strength and rationality after temporarily
giving in to superstition and an excess of feeling. In Ann Radcliffe’s
particular form of Gothic, of which Udolpho is perhaps the best example,
mysteries may confound for pages, spectral figures, distant groans and ghostly
apparitions may haunt the heroine, but eventually all is explained and reason
prevails.
(http://www.wwnorton.com/nrl/english/nael72/Period1Romantic/CourseSessions1/ByronHero.html)
At the same time,
another type but clear example could be Heathcliff (in Wuthering Heights (1845), Emily Brontë's only novel), a very
Byronic character, though he lacks the self-pitying that mars many Byronic
characters, and is deeply attached to the natural world and is considered the
fullest expression of her deeply individual poetic vision. In writing this
book, Emily was very affected by some characteristics used by the romantics,
especially, with the Byronic hero. Heathcliff and Catherine, who have a problem
with their conflicting emotions, represent the theme of fighting for freedom
and liberalism in the novel.
(http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/wutheringheights/about.html)
Another
characteristic of the Byronic hero that we can see in other works is the
troubles with sexual identity, which appears in Orlando, who firstly is a young gentleman and finally is a woman.
The strange and fantastic change of sexuality is influenced by Byron works, but
the author also used that to show her own personality.
Typically, the
Byronic hero has some sort of dark secret (in Jane Eyre, for example, Rochester's wife is hidden in the attic). But the Byronic
hero did not end in the 20th cent., because nowadays we can find it
in modern pop culture. For example, Xena, the heroine of the cult classic TV
series Xena: Warrior Princess is a
modern example of Byronic Hero, with a few changes. The most obvious twist is
that Xena is a Byronic heroine. She is part of a growing trend of strong women,
tough chicks and female warriors that has become popular in recent years. The
traditional Byronic hero is not only male but in many ways very masculine. Xena
is a woman who both men, and many women desire and who both men and women
admire. Xena has all the traits of the classical, masculine warrior-hero. She
is a great warrior, strong, fierce, courageous and stoic. But she is as also
beautiful and sexy in a “femme fatal” sort of way. She also has, increasingly
as her story continues, a soft, loving, protective and motherly side.
(http://www.laughton.com/cougar/writing/xena_as_byronic_hero.htm - Sarah
Laughton)
Due to these
characteristics, the Byronic hero is often a figure of repulsion, as well as
fascination. A perfect way to sum up the Byronic hero: "beautiful but
damned".
Bibliography:
http://www.poeticbyway.com/xbyron.htm
Home page: www.poeticbyway.com
http://www.laughton.com/cougar/writing/xena_as_byronic_hero.htm
Home page : www.laughton.com
http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/wutheringheights/about.html
Home page: www.gradesaver.com
http://www.wwnorton.com/nrl/english/nael72/Period1Romantic/CourseSessions1/ByronHero.html
Home page : www.wwnorton.com
http://www.poeticbyway.com/xbyron.htm
Home
page: www.poeticway.com
(Ann
Radcliff’s, The Italian, 1797)
(Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (canto 1),
1812)
4.
Byronism (by Aina García Coll and Thais Martínez
Alonso)
5. Byron’s
Influence on other poets (by Krysia Cogollos Latham-Koenig and Mª José Jorquera
Hervas)
6. Conclusion (by Manuela Elisa Blanes Monllor and Mª
Llanos García Martínez)
RETURN
TO POESIA (FIRST PAPER)
© Jéssica Aguilar Viñoles