Short Answer: In what ways might Byron be termed a “conservative” as a poet?

Short Question (Aprox 1-2 pages double spaced in length)
In what ways might Byron be termed a “conservative” as a poet?

Gorge Gordon, the 6th Baron Byron, is an extremely difficult figure to separate from his poetry because his contemporaries often conflated the author with his fictional characters (Greenblatt 608).Lord Byron led a flamboyant and socially scandalous life—for one thing, he reportedly had an affair with his half-sister. Also, the content of his poetry can be seen as scandalous and immoral. A prime example of this would be Byron’s mock-epic Don Juan with it rampant sexual content and its unreliable narrator. As such, it is hard to imagine his poetry as conservative. However, if one considers the fact that Byron’s poetry does owe a considerable debt to the satirists of the 18th century then one might cede that Byron’s poetry can be seen conservative in form, if not in content. Alexander Pope’s Horatian poems greatly influenced Byron’s work, particularly Don Juan, therefore it will be most fruitful to examine how Byron’s major satire of moral folly (a scandalous poem in content) is actually quite conservative in form.
Martin Maner in “Pope, Byron and the Satric Persona” examines the relationship between these two poets and their use of satiric persona. Maner points out that Byron’s literary disguise is but a variant of the traditional, naïve satiric persona, particularly as developed in Pope’s Horatian poems (564-565). However, Byron uses this naïve persona as a solution to the prudishness of his contemporaries. This naïve persona allows Byron to deal in the scandalous issues of sexuality and romantic affairs in Don Juan while seeming to deploring them.
As Maner notes, it is true that readers argue that there are no values presented in Don Juan; that both the title character and the narrator lack morality. However, these readers are overlooking the satirist’s devise of holing up a model of virtue for us to admire and see through it (565). This technique is integral to Byron’s construction of Don Juan. Consider the opening lines:
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and moth sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one:
In these opening lines, Byron establishes the persona of the narrator who is unable to hold on to one static idea of a hero. As such, the narrator, seemingly innocent, plays with our conception of a hero. However, his naivety allows him to comment on the social norms that produce and refute heroes. What Byron is doing is offering his reader a model to admire, but at the same time, expecting them to see through the guise (Maner 565). Thus, by adopting this traditional satiric tool, Byron is able to delve into moral ambiguities. Therefore, it can be concluded that Byron’s conservativism lies in his adoption of traditional literary devices, such as persona, rather than in his choice of content.

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Work Cited

Maner, Martin. "Pope, Byron and the Satric Persona." Studies in English Literature 20.4 (1980): 557-73. JSTOR. Web. 24 Jan. 2010.

Greenblatt, Stephen (ed)."George Gordon, Lord Byron." The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume D The Romantic Period. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. 607-11. Print.

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron AKA Lord Byron (1788-1824)


Although technically Bryon falls into the period known as the Romantic era, much of his work is actually more closely related to the satiric tradition of Alexander Pope and John Dryden. In fact, he drew upon Alexander Pope’s Horatian satires and Laurence Sterne’s novel Tristram Shandy in developing his style for his epic survey of modern folly, Don Juan.
However, even though he drew from old-fashioned texts, Byron was still a product of his age. As such, he was increasingly skeptical of the established belief system, particularly in the ideas expressed by the intellectuals of the day. In much of his poetry, he too explored the internal dramas of the individual mind. However, he approached the development of personality quite differently than say, Wordsworth, whose auto-biographical poetry revealed his psychological development.
Perhaps then, it is best to call Byron an arch-Romantic because he gave to the age the Bryonic hero, a model that his contemporaries could both admire and pity. First found in the opening Canto of Childe Harold, this figure will appear in Byron’s later works in various forms. The Byronic hero is an idealized, but flawed character. He is both mysterious and pessimistic. He possesses great talent, superior passion, and distains society and social institutions. He has little or no respect for rank or privilege. Within the Byronic hero is the memory of some guilt or crime, often nameless, which drives him to his inevitable doom. He is attractive to others because of their terror of his obliviousness to ordinary concerns or values. The Byronic hero is a non-political rebel is infused with erotic overtones. The Byronic hero has been imitated in various forms and has its ancestry in Milton’s work.
Examples of literary descendants of the Byronic hero:
Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights
Captin Ahab in Moby-Dick
Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre

Contemporaries of Byron often equated the author with his literary progeny and read his works as autobiographical. However, his letters show that his characters inherited only propensity for depression. In fact, his own temperament could be seen as the opposite of his characters.

Characteristics:
Noted characteristics of Byron’s writing style include speed, vehemence, and in his not-satiric poems, melodrama. The speed can be attributed to his clarity of both perception and phrase, which express the vigorous positivism of his mind. There is a relative scarcity of concrete, partial detail, which results in a boldness and of motion quite unlike the imagery used in Keats’s poetry.

There is an extensive use of clichés and stock phrases in Byron’s works. For example: Yet well thy soul hath brooked the turning tide” (The last phrase was clichéd even at that time. It is suggested that in order to get the full effect of each poem, the poem is to be read as quickly as possible. This rapidity implies a reliance on extreme emotion. In Byron’s works, one is dealing with poetry that carries all of the moods to an extreme pitch. The reader is confronted with theatrical or over-the-top emotions. In Byron’s works, emotion is to be enjoyed and even relished for its own sake. Byron’s poetry is known for its strength and masculinity.

Byron achieved great popularity and success during his life time. He was considered, through much of the 19th century to be the very epitome of literary Romanticism and he was rated as one of the greatest English poets. In fact, one French critic wrote of him as “the greatest and most English of these artists [the romantic poets]; he is so great and so English that from him alone we shall learn more truths of his country and of his age than from all the rest together.” His influence upon his contemporaries was great and varied. He influenced poets and novelists (Balzac and Stendhal in France, Pushkin and Dostoyevsky in Russia, and Melville in America). He also affected painters like Delacroix, and even composers like Beethoven.

However, despite his widespread popularity and influence, his literary status was challenged by Victorian critics who saw Byron as immoral and his aristocratic values classed with the values of the middle-class. Of Byron’s contemporaries, only Shelley openly thought highly of him.

Work Cited

"George Gordon, Lord Byron." The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume D The Romantic Period. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. 607-11. Print.