Childe is the hero of the poem. He is a young aristocratic. The poem is about his observation and reflection of his extensive travel to Belgium, Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy.
Pilgrimage: a religious tour. Childe: Knight.
Writing style of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
1. Spenserian Stanza: 9 lines in a stanza. First 8 lines are written in iambic pentameter 五步抑扬格, and the 9th line in iambic hexameter 六步抑扬格。 Rhyme scheme: aba b bcbcc.
2. Grand epic style.
3. Byron wrote this poem to satirize Spenser's Fairie Queen.
The most important theme of the poem:
Byron's consistent attitude of the antagonism towards tyranny and his enthusiasm for freedom.
Don Juan
1818-1823 written for 5 years. It contains 16 cantos. A few stanzas in the 17th canto. The poem isn't finished because of his death.
Don Juan is Byron's masterpiece, a great comic epic of the early 19th century. It's a poem based on a traditional Spanish legend of a great lover and seducer of women. Juan is immoral, yet Byron takes this poem as the most moral.
Byron invests in Juan the moral positives like courage, generosity and frankness, which, according to Byron, are virtues neglected by the modern society.
In the poem, Byron intends to present a panoramic view of different types of society. It presents brilliant pictures of life in its various stages of love, joy, suffering, hatred and fear. Byron is here attacking not a personal enemy but the whole hypocritical society.
Byron's Writing Style:
1. His poetry was popular at home and abroad and exerted great influence on the Romantic Movement.
2. Byron's diction, though unequal and frequently faulty, has on the whole a freedom, copiousness and vigor.
3. His description is simple and fresh, and often brings vivid objects before the reader.
4. His poetry is like the oratory.
5. The glowing imagination of the poet rises and sinks with the tones of his enthusiasm, roughing into argument, or softening into the melody feeling and sentiments.
6. Byron employed the Octave Stanza from Italian mock-heroic poetry.
Importance of Byron:
Byron's poetry has great influence on the literature of the whole world. Byron has enriched European poetry with an abundance of ideas, images, artistic forms and innovations. He stands with Shakespeare and Scott among the British writers who exert the greatest influence over the mainland of Europe
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