George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Things to Consider:
- Byronic Hero
- History and Politics
- Narrator / Persona
- The Sublime
- Horatian satire
- Spenserian Stanza
Discussion Questions:
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
from Canto Three (1816):
631:
- What are the characteristics of the
Byronic Hero?
640:
- Whom is the speaker addressing in
the first stanza?
641:
- Explain stanza 6 ("'Tis to create, and in creating
live...").
642:
- Explain: "Life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the
brim" (3.72).
644:
- Explain stanza 17 ("Stop!--for thy tread is on an Empire's
dust!").
645:
- Describe the speaker's attitude
toward Napoleon. In what ways is he, as the footnote
suggests, portrayed as a Byronic hero?
650:
- Explain stanza 72 ("I live not
in myself, but I become/Portion of that around me").
Does it express a Wordsworthian view? Explain.
652-53:
- Describe the speaker's attitude to Nature during the
thunderstorm depicted in stanzas 92-96.
654:
- How does the speaker present himself as a poet in stanza 97
("Could I embody and unbosom now/That which is most within
me")?
- Describe the speaker's attitude to
the world in stanzas 113-114. How does this position relate
to the speaker's status as a Byronic Hero?
Other Discussion Questions:
640:
- Explain the simile at the end of the second stanza.
641:
- How, according to the speaker, has he changed since his
youth? See also stanza 7.
642:
- Explain how Harold has changed in stanza 10.
643:
- Why does Harold consider himself unfit "to herd with Man"
in stanza 12?
- Describe Harold's relationship with Nature in stanzas
13-14.
644:
- Explain: "He wears the shatter'd links of the world's
broken chain" (3.162).
646:
- Explain: "[M]en's thoughts were the steps that paved thy
throne" (3.364).
647:
- Explain: "[Q]uiet to quick bosoms is a hell" (3.370).
- Explain: "One breast laid open were a school/Which would
unteach mankind the lust to shine or rule" (3.386-87).
- Explain stanza 45 ("He who ascends to mountain-tops ...").
649:
- Explain: "There is too much of man here, to look
through/With a fit mind the might which I behold" (3.648-9).
Is this a Wordsworthian view of Nature? Explain.
655:
- Describe the speaker's final address to his daughter.
