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The Romantic Rebel and the Byronic Hero

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And by the titanic figure of Napoleon Brooding Portrait of Lord Byron Theodore Gericault Characteristics of the Byronic Hero Gloomy and solitary ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: The Romantic Rebel and the Byronic Hero


1
The Romantic Rebel and the Byronic Hero
2
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Title Page
3
Themes in Blakes The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
  1. Blake uses the terms of conventional morality
    (Heaven/Hell Angel/Devil Good/Evil) and then
    reverses their moral polarity. He speaks in the
    voice of the devil, a strategy that is meant to
    be provocative.
  • 2. But Blake defines good and evil quite
    differently from the way we normally use the
    terms. He identifies good with reason and
    evil with energy, both of which are valuable
    and necessary.

4
  • 3. Finally, Blake connects energy with liberating
    vision. It is through the energy of creativity
    and imagination that human senses can be cleansed
    and perceive the infinite
  • To see the world in a grain of sand
  • And Heaven in a wild flower,
  • Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
  • And eternity in an hour.
  • Blake, Auguries of Innocence

5
Examples
  • Martin Luther King is now regarded as an American
    hero, but during the civil rights movement, many
    saw his tactics as disruptive of order. Blake
    would have seen King as a devil of energy, a
    rebel working against bad laws for a higher good.
  • French Revolution seen as evil by its opponents,
    but Blake sees it as an explosion of
    revolutionary energy with the potential to bring
    about universal human liberation.

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Holy Thursday
  • In the Innocence version, the wise guardians of
    the poor are angels in Blakes sense of the
    term they uphold the status quo and are good
    by conventional standards. But the Experience
    version sees them differently as oppressors who
    coerce the charity children. The entire ritual
    can be seen as a shame.

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Dont be fooled by Blakes terms
  • By using words like Heaven and Hell, Blake is
    calling attention to conventional moral attitudes
    which he wants to question and overturn. He is
    on the side of energy in terms of politics
    (liberty), art (originality) and human relations
    (a rejection of sexual repression).

11
Proverbs
  • You can lead a horse to water, but you cant make
    him drink.
  • People who live in glass houses shouldnt throw
    stones.
  • The early bird catches the worm.
  • A stitch in time saves nine.
  • A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
  • Lie down with dogs and youll get up with fleas.
  • All is not gold that glitters.

12
The First Seven Proverbs of Hell
  • In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter
    enjoy.
  • Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of
    the dead.
  • The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
  • Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by
    Incapacity.
  • He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
  • The cut worm forgives the plow.
  • Dip him in the river who loves water.

13
Byrons Manfred and the Byronic Hero
Lord Byron in Albanian dress.
14
Byrons Life
  • Byrons father Mad Jack Byron abandoned his
    mother, Catherine Gordon after running through
    her fortune.
  • She took her son back to her home in Aberdeen,
    Scotland.
  • He was ten years old when he inherited the title
    of Lord Byron and the ancestral Bryon home,
    Newstead Abbey near Nottingham.

15
George Gordon, 6th Lord Byron
16
Catherine Gordon
17
Newstead Abbey around 1880
18
Photograph of Newstead Abbey Today
19
Childhood and Education
  • Byron received sexual advances from his nurse,
    Mary Gray, when he was about eleven.
  • He was educated at Harrow, where he compensated
    for his club foot by excelling at sports like
    boxing, swimming and cricket.
  • At Trinity College in Cambridge, he lived
    extravagantly (he kept a trained bear) and got
    into debt, which plagued him all his life. He
    also formed a passionate attachment to a choir
    boy at Cambridge.

20
Trinity College, Cambridge
21
Byron at Age 19
22
Byron as International Celebrity
  • After his graduation, Byron traveled in Portugal,
    Spain, Gibraltar, Malta, Albania and Greece,
    places that were at the margins of Europe at that
    time, with his friend John Cam Hobhouse (1809
    1811).
  • During this time he wrote the first two cantos of
    the poem that would make him an international
    celebrity, Childe Harolds Pilgriamage.

23
Lord Byron Reposing in the House of a Fisherman
after Having Swum the Hellespont
Sir William Allan
24
Turners Painting Childe Harolds Pilgrimage,
1823
25
Man About Town The Best-Selling Author and His
Affairs, 1811 - 1814
  • The identification of the dashing writer with his
    protagonist proved irresistible to his readers
    and attracted many women.
  • Byron had infamous affairs with Lady Caroline
    Lamb (who wrote a novel, Glenarvon, with a
    villain closely based on Byron) Lady Oxford
    Mary Godwin Shelleys step-sister, Claire
    Clairmont and most notoriously, his half-sister
    Augusta Leigh.

26
Cartoon of Byron as a Man About Town
27
Lady Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron
28
Augusta Leigh, Byrons Half Sister
29
Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelleys Step-Sister
30
Marriage to Annabella Milbanke, 1815
  • Byron tried to escape from the complications of
    his many affairs and from his mounting debt by
    marrying a wealthy heiress, Lady Annabella
    Milbanke in January, 1815.
  • She was an intellectual with a particular gift
    for mathematics. Their daughter, Ada, was born
    in December 1815.
  • The marriage was a disaster the couple separated
    in 1816.

31
Annabella Milbanke Married Byron in 1815
32
Ada Byron, 1815 - 1852
  • Interestingly, their daughter, who never saw her
    famous father, wrote what has been called the
    first computer program.
  • She worked with Charles Babbage, who invented an
    early computing machine.
  • A software program developed by the U.S. Defense
    Department was named Ada in her honor in 1979.

33
Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace
34
Lord Byrons Novel The Evening Land by John
Crowley
Byrons novel uses a number of themes from his
life and from his work in a wild gothic story.
Crowleys novel intertwines three narrative
strands Emails (in the present) from a woman to
her lover and her estranged father Ada Bryons
diary and a text in code that turns out to be
The Evening Land, an undiscovered novel by Bryon.
35
Byron in Exile
  • Byron left England for good in 1816 driven away
    by scandal and debt.
  • He lived in Geneva, where he first met Shelley,
    and later in Venice. He went to Pisa, where the
    Shelleys settled in 1819.
  • Byron worked actively for Greek independence from
    Turkey, and died in Greece (1824) while training
    troops he paid to equip from his own funds.
  • He is still a national hero in Greece.

36
The Byron Café in Messolonghi, Greece
37
Statue of Byron in Athens
Byron Touched by the Muse
38
Welcome of Lord Byron at Messolgi
  • Theodoros Vrisakis, 1861

39
The Byronic Hero
  • Sees himself as apart from ordinary people, a
    being of superior intellect and strength of will
    (like Manfred).
  • Bears his terrible suffering (in his case, guilt)
    and rejects any power that would make him bend a
    knee.
  • Accepts nobodys judgment or condemnation of him,
    only his own. 
  • Insists on his ambition and his identity he
    seeks to strive, to seek, to find and not to
    yield, as Tennyson puts it in his poem Ulysses.

40
The Byronic Heros defiant stance was influenced
by Miltons Satan
Satan Summoning his Legions
41
And by the defiant Prometheus
Byron wrote a poem about Prometheus, making the
titan a type of the Romantic Rebel. Despite his
suffering, Prometheus refuses to give in to
Jupiter. He bears his suffering with great
courage and without Complaint. Byron offers him
as a model even against overwhelming odds we
can remain defiant. The stance itself becomes a
victory.
42
And by the titanic figure of Napoleon
43
Brooding Portrait of Lord Byron
  • Theodore Gericault

44
Characteristics of the Byronic Hero
  • Gloomy and solitary (Manfred alone at midnight
    raising spirits)
  • Powerful intellect and will (Manfred commands
    spirits and expresses his superiority to others)
  • Burdened by guilt (Manfred is crushed by guilt
    over Astartes death strong implication of
    incest)
  • Defiant (Manfred refuses to bend to anyone or
    anything)

45
Byrons Manfred a Summary
  • The play opens with Manfred brooding at midnight.
    He has gained great power through long nights of
    study and labor, but he is crushed by guilt. He
    calls up spirits who represent various aspects of
    nature and asks for oblivion total loss of
    consciousness but they cannot grant that. They
    imply that his spirit will outlive death. One of
    the spirits takes the form of his beloved, whom
    we later learn is Astarte, probably his sister.
    Manfred falls senseless.

46
Manfreds Study
47
  • Manfred climbs high into the alps, where he
    attempts suicide, but is prevented by a chamois
    hunter. Manfred admires the hunters simple,
    decent life, but rejects the idea that he would
    exchange places. Though he suffers, he asserts,
    with great pride, that he can bear this
    suffering. We see his strange combination of
    complaint and defiance, a theme of the play.

48
Manfred on the Jungfrau
49
Compare Dores Image of Satan Struggling to Climb
out of Hell
50
Manfred and the Chamois Hunter
Gustav Dore, 1853
51
Hold, madman! though aweary of thy life,Stain
not our pure vales with they guilty blood
Ford Maddox Brown, begun 1840
52
  • Manfred calls up the Witch of the Alps, who asks
    to hear his story. He tells her that from his
    youth on he felt separate from and superior to
    all others except Astarte, his soul mate and
    female double. The implication is that she was
    his sister and that his great sin was incest. He
    implies that he had something to do with her
    death. The Witch offers to help if he promises
    to serve her. Manfred angrily refuses and she
    disappears.

53
Manfred and the Witch of the Alps
54
Manfred and the Alpine Witch
John Martin, 1837
55
  • Manfred descends into the underworld to confront
    Arimanes, the principle of evil. Various evil
    spirits demand that he bow before Arimanes, but
    Manfred refuses, defying them all. Arimanes,
  • Impressed, grants his request to speak with
    Astarte. Her spirit appears but only calls his
    name and foretells his death. She ignores his
    request for forgiveness and he is convulsed in
    agony. The spirits ridicule his human weakness,
    until he uses his great will to recover. They
    grudgingly admit that he would have made a
    powerful spirit.

56
Manfred and the Phantom of Astarte
57
  • The abbot visits Manfred in his castle, seeking
    to offer the comforts of Christianity prayer,
    repentance and absolution. Manfred is defiant
    and rejects the abbots attempts, saying
  • I disdained to mingle with/A herd, though to be
    a leader and of wolves./The lion is alone and
    so am I.
  • Manfred again asserts his solitary and superior
    nature. The abbot follows him to see if there is
    any chance to help Manfred gain redemption. He
    is witness to the final scene.

58
  • In the last scene, a spirits come to summon
    Manfred to hell, be he defiantly refuses
  • I stand/upon my strength I do defy deny
    /Spurn back, and scorn ye!
  • Manfred knows he is dying and does not fear
    death, but he will not submit to the spirits,
    just as he refused to submit to the Witch of the
    Alps or to Arimanes. He will judge and condemn
    himself rather than submit to any external power.
    This act of defiance is central to the Romantic
    Rebel.

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60
Tchaikovskys Manfred Symphony Fourth Movement
Henry Fuseli, The Rosicrucian Cavern (1804)
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