GEORGE GORDON BYRON

1
GEORGE GORDON BYRON

• (1788-1824)

2
He was born in _____ in 1788.For a malformation
of the right leg he was slightly lame.

• His fame rests not only on his writings but also
  on his life
• Numerous love affairs, debts, separation, and
  allegations of incest.
• Famously described as mad, bad, and dangerous to
  know.

3

• He served as regional leader of Italys
  revolutionary organization the Carbonari in its
  struggle against ______.
• Later he travelled to fight against the Turks in
  the Greek war of Independence.
• He died of fever at ___________.

4

• He was educated at Harrow and Cambridge.
• 1807 Hours of Idleness, a collection of
  sentimental poems. Cold reaction by the critics
  and Byrons answer
• ____________________________

5
1809 _____ _____ a trip that rich, educated
young men went on.

• He visited all _________.
• He started the poetical account of this trip
  ______________________________.
• This was a great _______________.
• He was very outspoken about his radical political
  views and his private life was the source of much
  scandal.

6
His wife left him just before the birth of his
daughter.

• Social __________.
• He left England and went to Geneva.
• There he was joined by Percy and Mary Shelley
  with her step sister Claire Clairmont (daughter
  Allegra).

7

• In Venice Byron lived with a nineteen-year-old
  Countess ___________ and her rich husband.
  (Joined the Carbonari movement).
• 1822 - Shelley drowned in a boating accident.

8
Greece

• He contributed to the cause of Greek
  Independence.
• His health failed him and he died when he was
  only thirty-six.

9
Works

• He used many different styles and themes
• She walks in beauty is a lyrical portrait of a
  beautiful woman in a regular rhyme and simple
  language.
• Connotative use of language meaning suggested
  and evoked.
• So well go no more A-roving traditional folk
  ballad.

10
Narrative poems

• Childe Harolds Pilgrimage.
• In 4 cantos about the disillusionment of a young
  nobleman travelling around Europe.
• Europes glorious past (Italian Reinassance,
  Greek culture) in contrast with contemporary,
  oppression and decadence.

11
Don Juan 16 cantos

• Left uncompleted.
• While Harold is melancholy and introverted, Juan
  is a libertine, an adventurer . He uses him to
  satirise conventions of social life.
• Tone humor and contempt about the evils of
  society.
• Against the Tory politicians.
• Beliefs such as the glory of war, fidelity in
  love, basic goodness of humanity are ridiculed in
  the poem.

12
As the icon of romantic hero his importance was
unsurpassed.

• Byronic hero a gloomy, dissatisfied social
  outcast, a wanderer in foreign lands, a fighter
  againts social injustice.
• In his quest for selfrealization he rejected all
  social codes and conventions.
• Byron a romantic hero______________
• __________________________________________________
  ________________________