Type a new keyword(s) and press Enter to search

Byronic Hero

 

            George Gordon, the sixth Lord Byron, created the Byronic Hero in the nineteenth century. His writing and hero have influenced many others to incorporate these characteristics into their characters. The Byronic Hero generally has these characteristics:.
            
             rebels against convention or society .
            
             has a low tolerance for societal norms and social institutions .
            
             is isolated or has chosen isolation from society.
            
             is not impressed with rank and/or privilege .
            
             has larger-than-life abilities and larger-than-life pride .
            
             suspected of committing a crime or has been cursed .
            
             suffers from grandiose passions .
            
             has a tendency to be self-destructive .
             Byron created characters that have these characteristics. His two most famous, Manfred and Harold, are classic examples. Both had a low tolerance for social institutions and were isolated wanderers by choice: Manfred wandered the mountaintops - physically isolated - while his Childe Harold exiled himself to Europe and while still in society, wasn't part of it. Both were not easily impressed, considered themselves cursed and tended to be self-destructive.
             In Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto I, we find the first descriptions of the hero. Harold is described as a wanderer "Yet there I've wander'd by thy vaunted rill; Yes! sigh'd o'er Delphi's long-deserted shrine - .
             and his reasons for wandering can be found in lines 46-55. He was "sore sick at heart- but pride "the sullen tear congeal'd- so he chose to wander ("from his native land resolv'd to go -) He is described as a man who spent his youth carousing and was born of a long lineage - perhaps of noble birth. He evidently either rebelled against societal norms or committed an unknown crime against societal norms and it is this guilt that drives him to leave his native land. He is passionate about one woman whom he cannot allow himself to have but he loves her with a pure love.


Essays Related to Byronic Hero