3.
The novel “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”, its political importance. Byron’s literary innovation. Childe
Harold – a new character of the romantic literature.
127
128
4.
“Don Juan”. Genre characteristics of the work. Romanticism and realism
Byron’s distinction and originality is found in his anti-romantic
Don Juan.
He tired of his own poses
and of ‘cant’, the sanctimonious expression of sentiment. His new irony is much closer to the self he
reveals in his sparkling letters. Like Scott, Edgeworth, Peacock, Landor and Austen, Byron did not think that
the Romantic revolution invalidated rational criticism. Pope he thought far better than any of the
Romantics. His mature voice is first heard in
Beppo
and
The Vision of Judgement. Don Juan
(1818) begins
Byron’s
Don Juan
(pronounced in the English way), the legendary womanizer who ends in hell, the
Don Giovanni of Mozart’s 1787 opera, is, among other things, a humorous self-portrait: a passive
youngster who falls in with the amorous wishes of a series of beautiful women in Seville, Greece, St
Petersburg and England. But
Don Juan,
like
Tristram Shandy,
is not read for the Life but for the Opinions,
which include: ‘What men call gallantry, and the gods adultery,/Is much more common where the climate’s
sultry’ and ‘Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope;/Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Southey;/Because the first is crazed beyond all hope,/The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthey
...’. Although it rises to satire, most of
Don Juan
is a long-running joke. Insofar as it is self-display, the
mature milord is more interesting than the self-regarding Childe. ‘It may be profligate,’ Byron wrote to a
friend, ‘but is it not
life,
is it not
the thing
?’ He exposes hypocrisy with a wonderfully varied use of
anticlimax, which disarms as it unmasks.
QUESTIONS
1.
When was the first collection of poems by Byron published?
2.
Is Childe Harold an autobiographical character?
3.
Why do we consider Byron to be a real fighter for freedom?
4.
Why is Byron called the revolutionary poet? (Illustrate, if possible, from his poetry.)
5.
What is the general character of his work?
129
6.
In what kind of poetry does he excel? (Quote from
Childe Harold
to illustrate your opinion.)
7.
Describe the typical Byronic hero. Can you explain his great popularity at first, and his
subsequent loss of influence?
8.
When was the first collection of poems by Byron published?
9.
Is Childe Harold an autobiographical character?
10.
Why do we consider Byron to be a real fighter for freedom?
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