Byron Romantic

							 Romantic Poetry Presentation




        George Gordon , Lord Byron
By: Sarah Karl , Kristen Fino , and Sam Kazor
            Biography
  George Gordon or Lord Byron.
  1788-1824. He lived in London , England
  He came from two high strung and undisciplined families with
reputations of reckless living and violence.
  His father was a spendthrift army captain and a play boy.

 His father married two heiresses and got their fortunes.

  Byron’s mother was a tempestuous, proud, and slightly mad but
showered her child with love.
           Biography
• By the age of 10 Byron became the 6th Lord Byron after the death
of his great – uncle. He inherited a fortune and an estate.

• He entered Cambridge at the age of 17

• At the age of 23 he published the first two of the cantos of Childe
Harold’s Pilgrimage and they became very popular.

• After having several love affairs, he married his wife Annabella
Milbanke who was a very proper women. He did this to gain some
stability and respect in his life.
    Biography
• After one year of marriage, she started to question
his sanity and returned to her parent’s home and
took their new born daughter.

• Because of the separation of him and his wife it
disrupted society and forced Byron to leave England
in 1816 for good.

• Byron died April 19, 1824 at the age of 36
               Influences
• Byron was influences were mostly made up by many
authors and artists of the Romantic movement and by
the writers of Gothic fiction during the 19th century.

•He also used people from his everyday life such as
his personal physician for the character of Lord
Ruthven in the The Vampyre.
            Writing style

•Byron is known for being a mean, dangerous
man. His poems are deep, and reflect his
personal feelings. In this particular poem "She
Walks in Beauty" Byron used a great deal of
imagery to stress how beautiful and graceful the
women was. Many thought the woman in the
poem was his cousin that he met for the 1st time
at a funeral and the poem describes the first time
he met her.
She Walks in Beauty
      She walks in beauty, like the night
    Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
    And all that 's best of dark and bright
       Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
      Thus mellow'd to that tender light
     Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

    One shade the more, one ray the less,
    Had half impair'd the nameless grace
     Which waves in every raven tress,
       Or softly lightens o'er her face;
   Where thoughts serenely sweet express
   How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

   And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
       So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
   The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
     But tell of days in goodness spent,
       A mind at peace with all below,
      A heart whose love is innocent!
                  Imagery
•   Gives a visual of how beautiful she is by saying “like the
    night of cloudless climes and starry skies”

•   Description of her hair saying that it is “waves in every
    raven tress”

•   “Where thoughts serenely sweet express” is a form of
    alliteration.

•   “The smiles that win, the tints that glow” is a form of
    personification.
          Literary Elements

•   The tone of this poem is very loving and calm with the
    description of her smile , her eyes, and the light that
    she illuminates.

•   When the poem talks of “the best of dark and bright”
    that gives us the idea that such a lady includes her
    qualities light and darkness, good and evil and she is a
    mixture of both
      Figures of speech and
              sound
•   Byron uses a lot of examples of Metaphors in this
    poem.

•   The sounds in this poem are simple. It contains
    rhymed couplets Byron might have used this to
    keep the layout simple so that the descriptive
    words of the women’s beauty can be visualized.
               Allusion
  This poem is not necessarily a love poem, but
more of a celebration of the subject's beauty. Some
critics have said that Byron fell passionately in love
with his cousin and wrote this poem for her. He met
her for the first time while she was at a funeral of a
loved one. She wore a black evening dress (hence
the allusions to darkness, with the light referring to
her beauty) Lord Byron encountered his cousin,
known for her great beauty, and was taken aback.
Nowhere in the poem does Byron mention or allude
to love it was more of a courtly love.
                     Theme
    Unlike common love poetry, this poem describes the subject as being
possessed by beauty. The woman is beautiful, but it is so great that she is
actually surrounded by it, like an aura. To some extent, her positive
attributes create her beauty, and the poem makes a point of mentioning her
goodness, her serenity, and her innocence, which all have an effect on her
looks. There is another element, the “nameless grace” that is a type of
beauty granted by heaven, as in the expression “she is graced by beauty.”
The woman described in this poem is completely beautiful, inside and out,
that Byron goes out of his way to mention all of the sources, to show that he
appreciates her beauty to its fullest.
      Questions
1. Why does Byron compare the
  women to things in nature?
2. How can you tell that this isn’t
  romantic love but more of a
  courtly love?
3. In the poem when it says “The
  smiles that win, the tints that
  glow. ” what does it mean?