Byronic hero

The Byronic hero is a variant of the Romantic hero as a type of character, named after the English Romantic poet Lord Byron. Although there are traits and characteristics that exemplify the type, both Byron's own persona as well as characters from his writings are considered to provide defining features.

The Byronic hero first appears in Byron's semi-autobiographical epic narrative poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–1818). Historian and critic Lord Macaulay described the character as "a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection". The initial version of the type in Byron's work, Childe Harold, draws on a variety of earlier literary characters including Hamlet and Goethe's Werther (1774) (Thorslev,188); he was also noticeably similar to René, the hero of Chateaubriand's novella of 1802, although Byron may not have read this.

After Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the Byronic hero made an appearance in many of Byron's other works, including his series of poems on Oriental themes: The Giaour (1813), The Corsair (1814) and Lara (1814); and his closet play Manfred (1817). For example, Byron described Conrad, the pirate hero of his The Corsair (1814), as follows:

That man of loneliness and mystery,
Scarce seen to smile, and seldom heard to sigh— (I, VIII)

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