Lord Byron

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Lord Byron

• 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'.

Image sources 1, 2
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Outline

• His Life and Byron (BBC)
• Childe Harolds Pilgrimage Introduction
• Excerpts for Analysis
• She Walks in Beauty When We Two Parted
• For Next Week

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His Life (1)

• 1812 the first two cantos of 'Childe Harold's
  Pilgrimage' were published. Byron became famous
  overnight.
• 1814 half-sister Augusta gave birth to a
  daughter, almost certainly Byron's
• 1816 married Annabella Milbanke
• 1817 separation of the couple, Byron left England
  and never to return..

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His Life

• 1819 traveled to Italy, wrote a lot of famous
  works, including Don Juan (1819-1824).
• 1823 Joined to fight a war of independence
  against Ottoman Empire
• 19 April 1824 he died from fever at Missolonghi,
  in modern day Greece. (source)

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Byron (BBC)

• Part 2 Childe Harold
• Part 4 end marriage
• Part 5
• Our life is twofold. Sleep has its own world,A
  boundary between the things misnamed.Death and
  existence Sleep has its own world,And a wide
  realm of wild reality.(Byron, The Dream)
•  
• Part 6 argument over the marriage 800, Claire
  and Shelley
• Part 7 800 end
• Part 8 --
• In the desert a fountain is springing,In the
  wide waste there still is a tree,And a bird in
  the solitude singing,Which speaks to my spirit
  of thee.
• Stanzas to Augusta

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Byron Affairs and Scandals (image sources
Wikipedia)
                                   
Lady Caroline Lamb
Augusta Leigh
Anne Isabella Milbanke
Claire Clairmont
Ada Lovelace
Allegra Byron
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Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

• Cantos 1 and 2 (March 1812) Recounting Byron's
  travels between 1809 and 1811 , they depict an
  exotic landscape endowed with the interest of
  recent political and military events the first
  representation of Romantic Hero, isolated and
  melancholic, or cynical and bitter. (Mellown)
• Canto 3 -- in 1816, Byron resistant and
• Canto 4 -- in 1818.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage - Italy exhibited 1832
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Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Style

• the Spenserian stanza
• Although in the first two cantos he followed the
  consciously archaic style of 18th-century
  imitators of Spenser such as James Thomson, in
  the later cantos he endowed the stanza with a new
  speed and flexibility. E.g. The run-on lines move
  vigorously,
• e.g. the use of apostrophes, exclamations,
  questions, parallels, and hyperboles (Mellown)

Illustration from Childe Harold
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Canto I Opening Stanzas

• Sing to Muse this lowly lay of mine
• Harold, presented as a shameless wight (2),
  wandering through Sins long labyrinth (5).
• 6 exile
• But Pride congealed the drop within his ee
• Apart he stalked in joyless reverie,
• And from his native land resolved to go,
• And visit scorching climes beyond the sea
• With pleasure drugged he almost longed for woe,
• And een for change of scene would seek the
  shades below.

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Canto III Excerpts

• 1-16 to Ada, wandering rootless (2), past and
  present (traces of Wordsworths influence 3-5),
  Harold as a Romantic Hero
• 17-28 Waterloo
• 36-45 Napoleon
• 52-55 Harold, missing a fond breast
• 68-76 Switzerland (Nature)
• 77-78 Rouseau
• 85- 98 Switzerland (Nature)
• 114-118 Ada

Ada Lovelace
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Canto 3 Main Themes

• War, Transience, Injustice, Nature
• Description of Waterloo leads Byron to expound
  on characteristic themes the vicissitudes of
  earthly existence, the transiency of joy, the
  evils of injustice, and the futility of war. But
  the chief interest lies in the attitude to
  nature. Through Shelley, Byron had come briefly
  to adopt a Wordsworthian stance, and here he sees
  nature not just as a refuge from the cold
  indifference of society but as a life form which
  is fused with and a part of his own being. Yet
  unlike Wordsworth, even now Byron often found in
  nature not so much a mystical communion as a
  symbol of his own mind, the loftiest peaks most
  wrapt in clouds and snow'' (stanza 45) betokening
  the grand isolation of the romantic genius.
  (Mellown)

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Childe Harold Byron

• 6.
• Tis to create, and in creating live
• A being more intense, that we endow
• With form our fancy, gaining as we give
• The life we image, even as I do now.
• What am I? Nothing but not so art thou,
• Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth,
• Invisible but gazing, as I glow
• Mixed with thy Spirit, blended with thy birth,
• And feeling still with thee in my crushed
  feelings dearth.

source
Harold8-16 52 55 (last allusion to Harold)
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Themes

• Romantic Hero 7-16

• 14.
• Like the Chaldean, he could watch the Stars,
• Till he had peopled them with beings bright
• As their own beams and Earth, and earth-born
  jars,
• And human frailties, were forgotten quite
• Could he have kept his Spirit to that flight
• He had been happy but this Clay will sink
• Its spark immortal, envying it the light
• To which it mounts, as if to break the link
• That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to
  its brink.

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Themes

• Exile in Melancholy 70

• 69. To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind
• All are not fit with them to stir and toil,
• 70 There, in a moment we may plunge our years
• In fatal penitence, and in the blight
• Of our own Soul turn all our blood to tears,
• And colour things to come with hues of Night
• The race of life becomes a hopeless flight
• To those that walk in darkness on the sea
• The boldest steer but where their ports invite
• But there are wanderers oer Eternity
• Whose bark drives on and on, and anchored neer
  shall be.

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Themes

• Isolation in Nature 71

• Is it not better, then, to be alone,
• And love Earth only for its earthly sake?
• By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone,
• Or the pure bosom of its nursing Lake,
• Which feeds it as a Mother who doth make
• A fair but froward infant her own care,
• Kissing its cries away as these awake
• Is it not better thus our lives to wear,
• Than join the crushing crowd, doomed to inflict
  or bear?

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Nature

• 68
• Lake Leman woos me with its chrystal face,
• The mirror where the stars and mountains view
• The Stillness of their aspect in each trace
• Its clear depth yields of their far height and
  hue
• There is too much of Man here, to look through
• With a fit mind the might which I behold
• But soon in me shall Loneliness renew
• Thoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old,
• Ere mingling with the herd had penned me in their
  fold.

source
Nature 96
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Canto 3 Discussion Questions

1. Any lines you like?
2. How is nature imagery used in Canto 3? (esp. 68,
   72,96)
3. In what way is Childe Harold meant to be an
   analogy to the poet? (See stanza 6, especially.)
4. What does line 72 ("And life's enchanted cup but
   sparkles near the brim") mean?
5. How is Waterloo presented?
6. How do Byron's revolutionary views appear in this
   poem?
7. Does Childe Harold seem to see any redemption or
   hope for himself or human beings in general?
8. How does Switzerland affect Childe Harold?
9. Why does Byron choose to end Canto 3 by speaking
   to his daughter? What is the effect of this
   approach on the reader?

(reference)
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She Walks In Beauty

• SHE walks in beauty, like the night
• Of cloudless climes and starry skies
• And all that 's best of dark and bright
• Meet in her aspect and her eyes
• Thus mellow'd to that tender light
• Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
• One shade the more, one ray the less,
• Had half impair'd the nameless grace
• Which waves in every raven tress,
• Or softly lightens o'er her face
• Where thoughts serenely sweet express
• How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

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She Walks In Beauty

• And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
• So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
• The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
• But tell of days in goodness spent,
• A mind at peace with all below,
• A heart whose love is innocent!

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She Walks In Beauty Discussion Questions

• What is the main idea of this poem? What does
  beauty mean? (Appearance, grace, or heart and
  mind?)
• How is its meaning conveyed through the images of
  darkness and light, and of nature?
• The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
• But tell of days in goodness spent,
• A mind at peace with all below,
• A heart whose love is innocent!
• MV --
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vbVfQLggcM7k
• Byron She Walks In Beauty poem with text
  http//www.youtube.com/watch?vI_zCOJOgd4U

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"When We Two Parted (1816)

• How is the past and present set in contrast?

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Note Spenserian Stanza

• The Spenserian stanza is a fixed verse form
  invented by Edmund Spenser for his epic poem The
  Faerie Queene.
• Each stanza contains nine lines in total eight
  lines in iambic pentameter followed by a single
  'alexandrine' line in iambic hexameter.
• The rhyme scheme "ababbcbcc. (source)

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Works Cited

• Mellown, Muriel. "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
  Overview." Reference Guide to English Literature.
  Ed. D. L. Kirkpatrick. 2nd ed. Chicago St. James
  Press, 1991. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7
  Oct. 2012.