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Lord Byron And Childe Harold's Pilgrimage By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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If you want an inside glimpse into the man that Lord Byron was, all you need to do is pick up some of his prose. In any of his pieces, there’s a raw sense of emotion and vulnerability that no other Romantic shows. William Blake wrote of nature and religion. William Wordsworth wrote of the beauty of nature and how it made him feel in hindsight. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote of the supernatural and a sense of peace that eventually fades away. All of those Romantic poets used a piece of their life in their works, whether large or small, but not to the extent that Lord Byron did. The way that Byron pours his personal life into the prose without overtly putting himself in there, putting in emotion and internal dialogue without being too…show more content…
Another important part in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Byron unknowingly gives the first glimpse into what would later be referred to as the Byronic Hero. The Byronic Hero is usually a man who is smart and cunning. He’s sophisticated, moody, and anti-authority. He’s an arrogant, cynical exile who “knew himself the most unfit Of men to heard with Man; with whom he held Little in common” (lines 100-102) and engages in self-destructive behavior including sex, drugs, and alcohol. He was “Proud though in desolation; which could find A life within itself, to breathe without mankind” (lines 107-108) which shows that the Byronic hero did not need anyone else. While this describes most of Byron’s characters, it also describes clichéd love interests in modern-day teen novels and a classic trope in film and television. By describing himself and drawing upon himself for inspiration, Byron created something so iconic and unwavering that, very likely, will never die down. While Byron is himself the original Byronic Hero, other Romantics did not follow his footsteps: “a fever at the core, Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore,” (lines 377-378) most Byronic Heroes die relatively young, in a blaze of flames and rebellious greatness. Blake and Wordsworth died at 70 and 80 years of age, respectively. Byron, however, died at the age of 36 fighting in
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