Homework Questions:
631:

• What are the characteristics of the Byronic Hero?

• Explain the use of light and dark imagery.
• What is the "tender light / Which heaven to gaudy day denies" (5-6)?
• What is the overall theme of this poem?

"Darkness" (1816)
636:

• Explain: "I had a dream, which was not all a dream" (1). How does the second part of the line change the meaning of the poem that follows?
• Explain: "And men forgot their passions in the dread/Of this their desolation" (7-8).
• Explain lines 27-30.

637:

• Explain: "All earth was but one thought--and that was death" (42).
• Explain the meeting of the two enemies in lines 55-69.
• Why have the moon and the clouds perished?

• Why, according to the editors, did Byron's position within the canon of English Romantic poetry become insecure during the Victorian period?

631:

• Explain: "Byron cultivated a skepticism about established systems of belief that, in its restlessness and defiance, expressed the intellectual and social ferment of his era" (631).
• Explain: "Although Byronism was largely a fiction, ... the fiction was historically more important than the actual person" (631).

633:

• Describe the circumstances surrounding Byron's final departure from England.
• Describe Byron's relationship with Teresa Guiccioli.
  
• Describe the Pisan circle.