From Dawn to Twilight: The Byronic Hero

Göttinger Schriften zur englischen Philologie, 2012

Composition history and Byron's intentions, characteristics and nature of the Byronic hero (with examples from 19th century literature and 20th century pop culture, as well as pre-Byron predecessors), and the parallels and differences between Manfred and Nietzsche's superman.

Critical Review, 41, 2001

A discussion of the Byronic hero trope as visible in heroines of Victorian Fiction, particularly in Dickens and George Eliot

2016

The aim of this dissertation is to compare Heathcliff, the main character in Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights (1847) with the ‘Byronic Hero’, a prototype created by Lord Byron. The study is based on the common traces that both characters share, i.e.; an outcast with a troubled past, emotionally conflicted, with a high level of intelligence and a strong power of attraction, an idealist with self-destructive behaviour and a mysterious, enigmatic and charismatic but rebellious and arrogant nature.

Neohelicon, 1999

2019

The aim of this paper is to prove that Heathcliff can be called an example of the Byronic hero and that he shares many simillarities with him.

Indiana Theory Review, 2016

The works of poet Lord Byron were a tour de force over the course of the nineteenth century—from the serial release of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–1818), ever-famous poetry like Don Juan (1819), and his dramatic stage works, such as Manfred (1817), Byron can be noted as one of the most highly influential authors and artists of his time. Though Byronic style and traits were adopted by a variety of authors and poets throughout Europe, Byron’s influence stretched beyond the literary. Berlioz, Brahms, Schumann, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, and other nineteenth-century composers also adopted Byronic plots or narrative elements and incorporated them into musical works. Aside from the polemical writing style and sensational authorial persona that mark his work as distinct, Byron also introduced a unique character type, the “Byronic hero.” This novel hero manipulated standard behaviors and plot outcomes associated with earlier conceptions of the “hero” archetype, creating an entirely new standard character that revolutionized literature and art.

This paper focuses on the interplay of romantic and Gothic elements in the two most famous novels of Charlotte and Emily Brontё: Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Special attention is paid to the metamorphoses of the Byronic hero in those novels as well as to the presence of supernatural and Gothic elements in them. At the beginning, the paper discusses the Byronic heroes in the two novels Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and their characteristic features as Byronic heroes. I likewise identify other types of Byronic heroes in Jane Eyre. The following chapters are concerned with the supernatural and gothic elements in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre starting with an introduction of Gothicism, its appearance and development. I further consider the question of whether Wuthering Heights is Gothic or realist. Having in mind the sub types of Gothicism, I place Jane Eyre in the group of new Gothic romances which is confirmed by many critics. Key words: Byronic hero, Gothicism, supernatural, realism, mysticism

Draft of Paper given at Byron and Modernity Conference, Vancouver, BC, 2007

Lord Byron, despite his writing being quite classical, is considered one of the most important Romantic poets, along with William Wordsworth and Samuel L. Coleridge. His works, however, differ in many aspects with the thematic that Wordsworth and Coleridge focused on in their poems, making himself distinct and easily recognized. Besides being famous for his longer, epic and nowadays canonical works, such as Manfred, Childe Harlod's Pilgrimage or Don Juan, he also earned his fame with his good looks, character and controversial life. It is said that he wrote his poems using the poem's personna to express his thoughts and beliefs and making the readers think that the speaker was actually a personification of himself, even if it was not the case, creating with this the Byronic Hero. This happened in the poems that were long enough to develop the character's personality carefully so that the readers could comprehend and follow his philosophy towards life, freedom, romantic passion and politics, in a more elaborated sense. Even though what was being represented did not fully coincide with Byron himself, he assured to make people believe that he was just like that and that he wrote in an autobiographical way. What it is known these days is that it is not completely true; he did express some ideas through his main characters, but contrasting information with his actual life and the letters he sent, parallel to his writings, we realize that actually what he did was sell an image of what he created, the so-called Byronic Hero. We must not forget that apart of his major, widely-known lengthy works, he also wrote shorter poems. In this paper I will argue that, in his shorter poems, since there is no character that can be used as a vehicle to express his thoughts, feelings and ideas, he uses the speaker's voice as an opportunity to let people know of his view of the world in an " indirect " way. First of all, we must talk about the Byronic Hero in isolation from Byron's poems. This hero is a variant of the Romantic Hero, which usually was a figure that disliked social norms and institutions, conventions and who was isolated from society because of external reasons or by his own desire. Often, the Byronic hero is someone temperamental by nature and/or passionate about a particular topic. He is also superior to the average man, emotionally and intellectually, which makes it hard for him to relate in a social environment without being arrogant, sarcastic, extremely self-conscious and sensitive. Some say that the Byronic hero is drawn to a point of nihilism that causes a rebellion against life itself, for his rejection of the established values and moral codes because they do not represent him. With this portrayal, the Byronic hero is a combination of repulsion and fascination, which is a mechanism to strongly attract the readers and feel curious about him.