BYRON

ENGLISH LITERATURE SINCE ROMANTICISM

FALL 2023
BYRON (NORTON 608-609, 612)
• Popular in Europe in his time, but doesn’t have many
contemporary English admirers, except Shelley
• Victorians were offended by his immorality
• Byron’s skepticism, restlessness, and defiance reflect intellectual
and social tumult of his time
• Assists the Greek independent war
BYRON (NORTON 609)
• Explores personality in an improvisatory and mercurial
manner
• Conveys intense feelings
• His contemporaries read Byron’s writing as veiled
autobiography, but Byron’s temperament was opposite
to his heroes
• Introduces vampires to the English
• Byron’s image (similar to the vampires): well-dressed,
aristocratic elegance, good-looking, charismatic
THE BYRONIC HERO (NORTON 609)
• E.g. Childe Harold, Napoleon, Don Juan, Manfred
• Love someone who can never be his (CH stanza 5, canto 1;
Norton 617)
• Social misfit (CH stanza 12, canto 3; 621)
• Alienated (CH stanza 113, canto 3; 632)
• Extreme in all things (CH stanza 36, canto 3; 623)
• Grand passion (CH stanza 75, canto 3; 628)
• More features and lineage see Norton p. 609
FROM CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE
• Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage dominated the first half of Byron’s poetic
career just as Don Juan dominated the second
• Made Byron the best-known poet in England
• Travelogue, written when Byron was on a grand tour
• Virtuoso range of moods and subjects
• Preface to the first two cantos: Harold as “merely the child of
imagination”
• Fourth canto: Byron abandons the third-person dramatis persona
and speaks frankly in the first person
FROM CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE
• Spensarian stanza: ababbcbcc
• Childe is an ancient title for a young noble awaiting knighthood
• Title: Archaism, like 18 century predecessors
• First canto: serio-comic imitation of the language of the Elizabethan
era
• Line 1: invocation of Muse
• Line 9: summary of the story: a joke
• Stanza 4: a jaded young man, not a devout pilgrim
• Stanza 5: debauchery
FROM CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE
• Constant reinvention e.g. stanza 3, canto 3
• Childe Harold as the speaker’s alter ego (lines 58-59, canto 3;
Norton 619)
• Social misfit (stanza 12, canto 3; 621)
• Passion for roaming; restlessness (stanzas 13-15, canto 3; 621)
FROM CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE
• Third canto: written one year after Napoleon’s defeat at
Waterloo in 1815
• Lines 156-158, canto 3: Napoleon’s fleeting fame (Norton 622)
• Line 166, canto 3: republic vs. imperial
• Stanza 36, canto 3: the speaker doesn’t name Napoleon but we
all know it’s him; Napoleon as an example of the Byronic hero
• Line 330, canto 3: reinvent one’s identity (623)
FROM CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE
• Stanzas 72-73, canto 3: Byron absorbs Wordsworth’s views of
nature (Norton 628)
• Stanza 75, canto 3: grand passion of the Byronic hero (628)
• Stanza 97, canto 3: Harold embodies lightning (632)
• Stanza 113, canto 3: the Byronic hero is alienated (632)
• Stanza 115, canto 3: the speaker keeps changing scenes
FROM DON JUAN
• Longest satirical poem in English literature; unfinished
• Original legend of Don Juan: a Spanish libertine with
superhuman sexual energy and wickedness, ends up in hell, but
actually more acted upon by women than active
• Model: Italian serio-comic versions of medieval chivalric
romances of mixed moods, oscillations between the sublime
and the ridiculous, ottava rima (abababcc)
• Contemporary reception: immoral
FROM DON JUAN
• Influences on Don Juan: Pope’s Horatian satires, Sterne’s Tristram
Shandy (Norton 609)
• Controlling element: the narrator, not Don Juan
• The narrator’s running commentary on history
• Juan’s misadventure reflects European history and ends up
being guillotining in Revolutionary France
• Byron’s most biographical poem: Byron as Juan and narrator
EPIC VS MOCK EPIC
• Collective identity • Mocks the self-importance of
• National history epic
• Destiny, mission • Like epic, very long
• Serious matters • Improvise
• Grand characters
• Satirize epic conventions
• Oral tradition
• Borrowing and imitation
• In medias res
• High form (in hierarchy)
FROM DON JUAN
• First canto: “I want a hero”: desire/lack a hero c.f. invocation of
muse in epics (Norton 669)
• Line 2, canto 1: novelty, renewal, popular press transforms
heroism (669)
• Line 8, canto 1: mixture of high and low cultures
• Stanzas 6-7, canto 1: mocking epic conventions of in medias res,
digression (line 52) (670)
FROM DON JUAN
• Stanzas 26-27, canto 1: Donna Inez henpecks Don Jose (Norton
673)
• Line 304: punchline (674)
• Stanzas 39-44, canto 1: Don Juan’s moral, impractical education (675-
676)
• Stanzas 62 and 69, canto 1: Donna Julia (23 yrd), her husband Don
Alfonso (50yrd), and Don Juan (16 yrd) (679)
• “instead of such a ONE / T’were better to have two of five-and-
twenty” (lines 491-492, canto 1) (678)
FROM DON JUAN
• In this poem, women’s desire drives the plot
• Stanzas 90, 91, 94: debunks Wordsworth and criticizes Coleridge;
Juan as a Romantic poet lost in nature and imagination (Norton 682)
• June 6: Julia and Juan embrace (stanzas 105-115, canto 1; Norton
683-685)
• Stanza 116, canto 1: digression to Platonic love
• “And whispering ‘I will ne’er consent’--consented”: repressing
increases desire (line 936, canto 1; 685)
FROM DON JUAN
• Stanza 184, canto 1: Alfonso and Juan in a duel (Norton 692)
• Stanza 190, canto 1: Inez sends Juan on a journey to mend his
morals
• Stanzas 192-197, canto 1: Julia’s letter reveals her interiority and
creates sympathy; her letter is the only sustained narrative
(without digression) in canto 1
• Lines 1545-1546: “Man’s love is of his life a thing apart, / ‘Tis
woman’s whole existence” (694)
FROM DON JUAN
• Stanza 200, canto 1: c.f. structure of Aeneid (Norton 696)
• Line 1600: self-conscious of writing a mock epic (696)
• Stanza 201, canto 1: mocks Aristotle’s Poetics: anagnorisis,
peripeteia, catharsis; imitation of great deeds by noble heroes,
about tragic downfall
• Stanza 204, canto 1: refers to Longinus’ On the Sublime:
promotes good writing that has five sources of sublimity: grand
thoughts, strong emotions, figure of speech, graceful
expressions, dignified structure
FROM DON JUAN
• Stanza 205, canto 1: defends Dryden and Pope (neoclassic
writers) against Romanticists (Norton 697)
• Stanza 206, canto 1: Byron’s parody of the Ten Commandments
• Stanzas 213 and 216, canto 1 : the narrator is 30 yrd,
experienced, single (698)
• Stanza 221, canto 1 on “purchaser”: awareness of markets and
consumers, closing the gap between publishing industry and
high art (700)
“SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY” (NORTON 613)
• The title and the pause/caesura for emphasis: she makes
everything around her beautiful
• Assonance: similar sounds between vowels or between
consonants e.g. “like the night” (1)
• Alliteration: similar beginning sounds e.g. “cloudless climes,”
“starry skies” (2)
• No suggestion of a relationship between the speaker and
woman described here
 “SO WE’LL GO NO MORE A-ROVING”
• Farewell to youthful wildness
• Note 1 on Norton 616: based on Scottish song, “The Jolly Beggar”
(traditionally attributed to James V of Scotland from the 16 century)
And we'll gang nae mair a roving
Sae late into the night,
And we'll gang nae mair a roving, boys,
Let the moon shine ne'er so bright.
And he took out his little knife, loot a' his duddies fa';
And he was the brawest gentleman that was amang them a'.
“SO WE’LL GO NO MORE A-ROVING”
• Contained in a letter to Thomas Moore, Feb 28, 1817:
“At present, I am on the invalid regimen myself. The Carnival—that is,
the latter part of it—and sitting up late o’ nights, had knocked me up
a little. But it is over,—and it is now Lent, with all its abstinence and
Sacred Music. The mumming closed with a masked ball at the Fenice,
where I went, as also to most of the ridottos, &c. &c. and, though I did
not dissipate much upon the whole, yet I find ‘the sword wearing out
the scabbard,’ though I have but just turned the corner of twenty-
nine.”
 BRAND STORY

• Requirements:
1. Mention the author’s name.
2. Introduce the name of this “Romanticist brand.”
3. Based on the information you can find in Norton, describe what his/her “brand” is about.
What is the author famous for? Introduce the work’s title, theme, and genre.
4. Optional: Based on the information you can find in Norton, describe the origin of his/her
“brand”: family, education background, or people that influenced his/her writing.
• Note: You should consult Norton but you cannot copy it. You need to paraphrase or
summarize Norton.
• 評分項目: 資訊正確(10%); 創意(10%); 呈現方式恰當(5%); 反思學習單(10%)
NEXT WEEK: MIDTERM EXAM

• Covers weeks 1-8

• Bring your laptop or tablet to class
• Open-book: Norton, slides, and notes are fine