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Lord Byron’s Self Portrait Through Don Juan
Lord Byron is probably the most notorious Romantic poet and satirist. ... Lord Byron, born George Gordon, was the son of Captain John Byron, and Catherine Gordon, a self-indulgent, somewhat hysterical woman. At home Byrons alcoholic governess made sexual advances towards him at the young age of five and through the next four years of his childhood. Byron grew up in poor surroundings until he inherited the title and property of his great-uncle in 1798; when he went on to Dulwich, Harrow. Success as a writer came in 1812 when Byron published the first two cantos of Child Harold’s Pilgrimage. Byron later said, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous”(Marchand 121). ... During the summer of 1813 Byron entered into a more than brotherly relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh. Two years later Byron embarked on an unhappy and loveless marriage, which ended within a year. When the rumors started to circulate of incest, Byron left England in 1816, never to return. Byron once wrote a friend saying, The only virtue they honor in England is hypocrisy,(Marchand 241). During years traveling through Italy, Byron began Don Juan, his epic and satiric masterpiece. Unfortunately Byron never completed his masterpiece as he died in 1824.
Throughout his very eventful and scandalous life, Lord Byron encountered many circumstances that altered his views forever. Through his experience with his abusive nanny Byron grew to view women as both offensive and deceitful. Byron also lost faith in marriage as a loving union. Finally, Lord Byron sacrificed his name, money, and home in the name of love. Each of these aspects is paralleled throughout Lord Byron’s epic satire. Through his epic poem, Don Juan, Lord Byron reflects his own life experiences.
Byron portrays his own attitudes through the characters’ feelings and emotions throughout Don Juan. As Phyllis Gosscurth said, “ …it is rather a picture of Byron and Juan is just there to show the way the man lived. ... Throughout the poem, Byron displays an excessive fascination with the beauty of women he is involved with. Byron writes, “Many and beautiful lay those around/ Like flowers of different hue and clime and root/ In some exotic garden sometimes found/ With cost and care and warmth induced to shoot. ... ” (Byron 324). This obsession with the beauty of women clearly displays Byron’s own focus on physical attraction.
Approximate Word count = 1975
Approximate Pages = 7.9
(250 words per page double spaced)
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