Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by George Gordon, Lord Byron  

Background:  George Gordon (1788-1824) succeeded his uncle to the barony in 1798 which provided a small income.  He was one of the most important English poets of the Romantic movement, and his short life was regarded as a model of the romantic hero.  He married Anne Milbanke, an aristocratic heiress, in 1815; she bore a daughter that same year.  They separated shortly thereafter, and Byron left England in 1816, never to return.  Byron achieved fame with the publication of the first two cantos of “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” (1812), a narrative poem about the journey of a young man through southern Europe.  The hero of the poem is a young man whose powerful emotional experiences provide him with insights beyond “ordinary” humanity and who simultaneously is weighed down by them as though by a heavy burden.  Byron’s good looks and physical prowess (to overcome for a physical defect in his foot) and even his “scandalous” personal life — all contributed to his popularity.  He died of a fever fighting for Greek independence.

Web resources:  The Byron home page provides many valuable resources for approaching the work and life of Byron.  Go here for a bibliography of Byron's works and biographies.  To view samples of Byron’s poetry, including canto 2 and canto 3 of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (from which many of the readings for our text are taken), go to the University of Toronto’s on-line edition of poetry.

Discussion questions:

Notice the turbulent portrayal of natural forces in the opening stanzas (95-96) from the selection.  Can these be sorts of emotional forces that the “hero” of the Romantic movement undergoes?  What point is he making next (97) when he reveals the difficulty he has of expressing his experience?

What kind of relationship to society is Byron describing in stanzas 113-114?  How does his description of his relationship with his infant daughter (in stanzas 115-118) further characterize his relationship with society?  Is he assuming here the stance of the Romantic hero?

From Canto IV, consider images in stanza 178.  What is the appropriate relationship to society presumed here?

Are you able to discern any sort of “transformation” or “reconciliation” that the “hero” must undergo?  What is the relationship of the “hero” to the larger society?