B yron, L ord, Poetry

Abstract

Of all English poets writing during the Romantic period, George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824) was the one whose life and art were most consistently joined in the public imagination. Lord Byron became a literary celebrity early in his career, and frequently wrote poetry based on his own experiences, including his travels, his sexual scandals, his personal relationships, and his involvement with the tumultuous political events of the era. In so doing, he forged a category that we have come to call ‘the Byronic’, its hero a wandering, noble outlaw, both erotically compelling and haunted by loss, defiant and rebellious, stoic yet ultimately a victim of his own passions. This persona emerged primarily from Byron's first major work, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage , with its misanthropic wandering hero, and from his so‐called Eastern Tales, verse narratives such as The Corsair and The Giaour that feature a recognizable outlaw‐hero. The immense popularity of these poems imprinted the Byronic mode upon several generations of writers across Europe and America, an influence that remains in many cultures to this day. Yet Byron produced a much wider range of poetry than this narrative suggests, including lyrics, satires, dramas, and his ironic epic, Don Juan (pronounced ‘Joo‐ahn’ in Byron's poem), which is generally considered his masterpiece. Furthermore, his poems often resist easy classification according to genre, given their mobility of tone and hybridity of structure. The contradictions and oscillations of Byron's life find expression in the complex forms of his poetical works.