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Essay on Emotion and Feeling in Lord Byron's Poetry

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The genre of poetry itself produces connotations based around raw emotions, especially when considering poetry from the Romanticism era. Furthermore, poetry which is based on emotions (whether negative or positive) is what makes it successful in evoking a more personal response from the reader. When exploring poetry references such as 'The English Poetic Mind' by Charles Williams, he states how when 'We are told of a thing; we are made to feel as if that thing were possible to us; and we are so made to feel it-whatever the thing may be, joy or despair...knowledge is an intense satisfaction to us '1. This statement supports the idea that a certain emotion must be within a poem, meaning if the reader is able to relate to it, the poem is more …show more content…

This raw emotion is brought out due to Byron's poetry being mostly autobiographical, and due to this, the poet can be assessed. Charles Williams again makes a strong point when he states 'Poetry, one way or another, is 'about' human experience; there is nothing else that it can be about '3. It is this 'human experience' that can be explored within Byron's poetry through the themes of love, loss, frustration and anger. Despite Byron's somewhat erotic reputation, platonic love and regret are the themes of the poem 'When we two parted'. The woman this is written for is not his wife, but Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster, who he had a brief, platonic affair with. This poem is written after his separation with his wife. Due to hearing about Lady Frances having another potential affair, he 'revived the emotions of the past with the verses '4. Phrases within the poem evoke a feeling of tenderness; 'When we two parted/In silence and tears,/Half broken-hearted,/To sever for years' (l.1-4). This shows how they had to meet in secret to share moments of love, however the lexical choice of 'Half broken-hearted' suggests that this was not a stout love, thus resulting in the separation. The 'silence and tears' is again repeated in the last stanza, which reiterates the private relationship they had. Furthermore, regret seems to be within the poem, as he writes 'I

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