Information about Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by J.M.W. Turner, 1823.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem written by the British poet George Gordon, Lord Byron when at Kinsham. It was published between 1812 and 1818. The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands; in a wider sense, it is an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. The title comes from the term childe, a medieval title for a young man who was a candidate for knighthood.

The poem is quite autobiographical, and the earlier portion of the work is based upon his travels through the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea between 1809 and 1811. Despite the fact that Byron did not think the poem was all that good^[1], feeling it revealed too much of himself, it was an instant sensation when published by John Murray, and made Byron famous in England practically overnight. Women, especially, swooned over the poem, fascinated by the character of Childe Harold, his foreboding, and his nameless vices. Lord Byron quickly became the darling of the influential female aristocrats of the day; they recognized bits of Childe Harold in him, and he felt compelled to live up to this reputation.

The work introduced the concept of the Byronic hero, which is still somewhat popular today and shows up in novels, films and plays on a regular basis. The Byronic hero is usually described as an outsider, and with a contradictory nature; sometimes cruel, sometimes kind, devoted but unfaithful, and never contented, but eternally seeking out new sensations.

It has four cantos written in Spenserian stanzas, which consists of eight iambic pentameter lines followed by one alexandrine (a twelve syllable iambic line), and rhyme pattern ABABBCBCC.

Childe Harold became a vehicle for Byron's own beliefs and ideas; indeed in the preface to book three Byron acknowledges the fact that his hero is just an extension of himself. By masking himself behind a literary artifice, Byron was able to achieve what critic Jerome McGann depicts as "man's greatest tragedy is that he can conceive of a perfection which he cannot attain".

Though the original poem contained a number of risquÃ© passages, such as mentions of Albanian pederasty, these were mostly suppressed, either by his own hand or at the time of publication. ^[2]

References

1. ^ MacCarthy, Fiona: Byron: Life and Legend, page 139. John Murray, 2002 .
2. ^ The International Byron Society: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Cantos I and II, uncensored version, including notes [1]

External links

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Full Text

Narrative poetry is poetry that tells a story. The poems may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be simple or complex. It is usually nondramatic, with objective verse and regular rhyme scheme and meter.
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Lord Byron

Born: 22 January 1788
London, England
Died: 19 March 1824 (aged 36)
Messolonghi, Greece
Occupation: Poet, revolutionary

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Kinsham

Kinsham ()

|240px|Kinsham (

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1812 1813 1814 1815
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1780s 1790s 1800s 1810s 1820s 1830s in poetry|1840s |
18th century 19th century 20th century
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1818 1819 1820 1821
1815 1816 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821
1780s 1790s 1800s 1810s 1820s 1830s in poetry|1840s |
18th century 19th century 20th century
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The Napoleonic Era is a period in the History of France and Europe. It is generally classified as including the fourth and final stage of the French Revolution, the first being the National Assembly, the second being the Legislative Assembly, and the third being the Directory.
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For people named Childe, see .

In the Middle Ages, a childe was the eldest son of a nobleman who had not yet attained to knighthood, or had not yet won his spurs.
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Middle Ages form the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three "ages": the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Modern Times.
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Knight is the English term for a social position originating in the Middle Ages. In the Commonwealth of Nations, knighthood is a non-heritable form of gentility, but is not nobility.
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Mediterranean is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Europe, on the south by Africa, and on the east by Asia. It covers an approximate area of 2.
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For the ship Aegean Sea, see .

The Aegean Sea (pronounced [i:ˈdʒi:ən/span>]], Greek:
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18th century - 19th century - 20th century
1770s 1780s 1790s - 1800s - 1810s 1820s 1830s
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18th century - 19th century - 20th century
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1808 1809 1810 - 1811 - 1812 1813 1814

:
Subjects: Archaeology - Architecture -
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John Murray is a British publishing house, renowned for the roster of authors it has published in its history, including Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Byron, Charles Lyell, Goethe and Charles Darwin.
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The Byronic hero is an idealized, but flawed, character exemplified in the life and writings of Lord Byron, characterized by his ex-lover Lady Caroline Lamb as being "mad, bad and dangerous to know".
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novel (from, Italian novella, Spanish novela, French nouvelle for "new", "news", or "short story of something new") is today a long prose narrative set out in writing.
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Film is a term that encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or special effects.
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play or stageplay, written by a playwright, or dramatist, is a form of literature, almost always consisting of dialogue between characters, intended for performance rather than reading.
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Canto may refer to:

Canto Software, a digital asset management software company
Canto nuevo, a Latin American folk music style
Canto fermo, the melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition
Bel canto, an operatic singing style
Canto General

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The Spenserian stanza is a fixed verse form invented by Edmund Spenser for his epic poem The Faerie Queene. Each verse contains nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by a single 'Alexandrine' line in iambic hexameter.
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iamb or iambus is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. Originally the term referred to one of the feet of the quantitative meter of classical Greek prosody: a short syllable followed by a long syllable (as in i-amb).
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In poetry, a pentameter is a line of verse consisting of five metrical feet. Iambic pentameter is one of the most commonly used meters in English, used extensively by many poets, including William Shakespeare, John Milton, and William Wordsworth.
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An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter. Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the Baroque period and in French poetry of the early modern and modern periods.
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rhyme is a repetition of identical or similar sounds in two or more different words and is most often used in poetry. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes.
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Jerome McGann (born July 22, 1937) is a scholar, essayist, and textual theorist whose work focuses on the history of literature and culture from the late eighteenth-century to the present.
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The practice of pederasty in Albania has a long history, and continued into the 19th century. As late as the mid-1800s, Albanian young men between sixteen and twenty-four courted boys from about twelve to seventeen.
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