Lord Byron Poetry
George Gordon, Lord Byron, was the most flamboyant and notorious of the major English Romantic poets, and also the most fashionable poet of the early 1800s. He created a highly popular Romantic hero, characterized by defiance, melancholy, and a haunting sense of secret guilt, which many regarded as a model. Byron was a Romantic paradox, as he was a leader of the era's poetic revolution, yet named Alexander Pope as his master. He was a worshipper of the ideal, yet never lost touch with reality. He was a deist and freethinker, yet retained a Calvinist sense of original sin from his youth. As a peer of the realm, he championed liberty in his works and deeds, giving money, time, energy, and ultimately his life to the Greek war of independence. Byron's multifaceted personality found expression in a variety of literary forms, including satire, verse narrative, ode, lyric, speculative drama, historical tragedy, confessional poetry, dramatic monologue, seriocomic epic, and voluminous correspondence, written in Spenserian stanzas, heroic couplets, blank verse, terza rima, ottava rima, and vigorous prose. Through his dynamism, sexuality, self-revelation, and demands for freedom for oppressed people everywhere, Byron captivated the Western mind and heart like few writers have. He left an indelible mark on 19th-century letters, arts, politics, and even clothing styles, as his image and name became synonymous with the embodiment of Romanticism.
