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Biography • Lord Byron was the most aristocratic, flamboyant, and notorious of the great Romantics, yet he was a popular figure in his own day and an important influence on the literature which came after him. He was himself the prototype of a new Romantic hero, the social exile, the cynic, and the melancholy man, brooding over a secret sin and suggesting depths of soul which attracted men and women alike. • Byron was born in London in 1788, handicapped from birth by a deformed leg. • When he was only three, his father died in France . • The boy was raised by his mother under impoverished and unstable conditions.
Biography • At ten, however, he inherited the title and estate of his great-uncle William, Lord Byron. • Three years later, his mother enrolled him in Harrow, one of England's great “ public schools. ” • In 1805 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge. • In 1806 he published his first collection of poems, Fugitive Pieces. The following year, a revised and expurgated selection of these early poems appeared under the title Poems on Various Occasions. A few months later he reissued this work, calling it now Hours of Idleness.He returned to Cambridge and received his M.A. in 1808.
Biography • In 1809, Byron and one of his college friends, J.C. Hobhouse, set out on an extended tour of Spain, Portugal, Albania, and Greece. One fruit of this expedition was the poet's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the first two cantos of which were published in 1812, the third in 1816, the fourth in 1818. • Early in 1815 he married Anne Isabella Milbanke, but the marriage was an unhappy one and the unhappy couple separated in the following year. But not before Lady Byron had borne him a daughter, Augusta Ada. • The separation caused a great deal of malicious gossip. Angry at the talk and vexed that his efforts toward a reconciliation with his wife were unsuccessful, Byron and some friends, left England. The poet never returned to his native land. • In Geneva he struck up a friendship with Shelley .
Biography • In 1817 Byron published his best poetic drama, Manfred. The following year saw the publication of Beppo. From 1818 to 1824 he worked on his satirical masterpiece, Don Juan, a long, rambling narrative poem. • In 1821 the Greek War of Independence broke out. As an enthusiastic supporter of the Greeks, Byron joined the insurgents, but at Missolonghi he contracted a fever and died
Biography • his contribution to romantic movement Byron contributed to the Romantic movement in many ways. In Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, for example, he created a melancholy hero, moved to reflection by picturesque scenes, a brooding man poignantly conscious of his aloneness, of his isolation from society. In the Turkish Tales, Byron appealed to the popular demand for “tales of terror” and showed his “Gothic” imagination. In Don Juan, the author poses as an anti-Romantic, a man who is completely down-to-earth, completely honest. His pose is that he despises the affectations of poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge. He wants to have nothing to do with misty theorizing. On the other hand, the author's determination to speak his own mind, to speak fearlessly, to record his unique encounter with life is essentially an expression of Romantic individualism. The pose in Don Juan is very different from that in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Both poses, however, were struck by a poet who responded to the new Romantic emphasis on self rather than on society.
Don Juan 1. the plot of the poem 2. the theme of the poem 3. background information Childe Harold's Pilgrimage 1. the plot of the poem 2. Byronic Hero 3. the style of the poem 4. romantic aspects of the poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage The Isles of Greece Selected poems
