Byronic hero

The Byronic hero is an idealised but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of English Romantic poet Lord Byron. It was characterised by Lady Caroline Lamb, later a lover of Byron's, as being "mad, bad, and dangerous to know".^[1] The Byronic hero first appears in Byron's semi-autobiographical epic narrative poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–1818).

Characteristics

The Byronic hero typically exhibits several of the following traits:^[2]

• Arrogant
• Cunning and able to adapt
• Cynical
• Disrespectful of rank and privilege
• Emotionally conflicted, bipolar, or moody
• Having a distaste for social institutions and norms
• Having a troubled past or suffering from an unnamed crime
• Intelligent and perceptive
• Jaded, world-weary
• Mysterious, magnetic and charismatic
• Seductive and sexually attractive
• Self-critical and introspective
• Self-destructive
• Socially and sexually dominant
• Sophisticated and educated
• Struggling with integrity
• Treated as an exile, outcast, or outlaw

History

After Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the Byronic hero made an appearance in many of Byron's other works, including his series of poems on Oriental themes: The Giaour (1813), The Corsair (1814) and Lara (1814); and his closet play Manfred (1817).

Byron's influence was manifested by many authors and artists of the Romantic movement and by writers of Gothic fiction during the 19th century. Lord Byron was the model for the title character of Glenarvon (1816) by Byron's erstwhile lover Lady Caroline Lamb and for Lord Ruthven in The Vampyre (1819) by Byron's personal physician, Polidori. Captain Wentworth in Persuasion by Jane Austen (1818), Claude Frollo from Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831), Heathcliff from Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Edmond Dantes from Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo (1844),^[3] (1847), Rochester from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), Dorian Gray from The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde, and James Steerforth from Charles Dickens's David Copperfield (1849–1850) are other later 19th-century examples of Byronic heroes.

Scholars have also drawn parallels between the Byronic hero and the solipsist heroes of Russian literature. In particular, Alexander Pushkin's famed character Eugene Onegin echoes many of the attributes seen in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, particularly, Onegin's solitary brooding and disrespect for traditional privilege. The first stages of Pushkin's poetic novel Eugene Onegin appeared twelve years after Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and Byron was of obvious influence (Vladimir Nabokov argued in his Commentary to Eugene Onegin that Pushkin had read Byron during his years in exile just prior to composing Eugene Onegin). The same character themes continued to influence Russian literature, particularly after Mikhail Lermontov invigorated the Byronic hero through the character Pechorin in his 1839 novel A Hero of Our Time.

The Byronic hero is also featured in many contemporary novels, and it is clear that Lord Byron's work continues to influence modern literature as the precursor of a commonly encountered type of antihero. The lead character, Stephen Dedalus, of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914–1916) is one of the most famous literary heroes of this genre.^{[citation needed]} Erik, the Phantom from Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera (1909–1910) is another well-known example from the early twentieth century.

See also

• Charisma
• Hero
• Romantic hero
• Romanticism
• Tragic flaw
• Antihero
• List of fictional antiheroes
• Tragic hero

References

1. ^ Jonathan David Gross (2001). Byron: The Erotic Liberal. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 148. ISBN 0742511626. http://books.google.com/books?id=eklv1osnfMgC&pg=PA148&dq=%22Byronic+hero%22&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html. 
2. ^ http://www.umd.umich.edu/casl/hum/eng/classes/434/charweb/CHARACTE.htm
3. ^ Alexandre Dumas (1844). The Count of Monte Cristo. Wordsworth Classics. p. 247. ISBN 978-1-85326-733-8. 

External links

• Characteristics of the Byronic Hero
• The Byronic Hero