Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (Magill Book Reviews)
At a glance:
- Author: Lord George Gordon Byron
- Type of Work: Poetry
- Genres: Poetry, Picaresque fiction, Narrative poetry
- Subjects: Europe or Europeans, Autobiography, Poetry or poets, Antiheroes, Heroes or heroism, Romanticism, Middle Ages, Rome
- Locales: Spain, Italy, Greece, Belgium
Byron was already an established writer by 1812, but with this work he replaced Sir Walter Scott as England’s most popular poet. His audience was eager for material dealing with the Near East, and this he supplied. Of particular interest were his vivid descriptions of Albania, which Byron was one of the first Englishmen to visit.
The poem also created the popular Byronic hero--proud, brilliant, and attractive, but also bored, gloomy, lonely, disillusioned, and isolated from the rest of humanity. This figure, who narrates the poem, provides much of whatever unity the...
[The entire page is 582 words long]
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