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A review by chluless
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by George Gordon Byron
adventurous
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Childe Harold is a complex poem. It is a travelogue, a spiritual pilgrimage, and an exploration of the self mediated through medievalism and ideas of chivalric romance.
The protagonist begins as a distanced version of Byron, but as contemporary readers refused to separate the poetic from the autobiographic, the lines between the 'I' of narrator, Childe Harold, and the author-poet begin to blur with each published Canto.
Although I did grow tired of the constant battle stanzas, there is no denying the incredible skill of Byron's work - or the plethora of highly quotable lines.
His exploration of the self through different guises, poetic styles, and cultural figures to the point of collapse is particularly effective. There is a depth to his string of allusions, and much to be found in the returns to comfort in process or movement, and the ever-present status of an exile.
Byron's poem is also unique within Romanticism as his sublime interactions with nature occur less through landscape, and more through the self-erasing, and ever-changing ocean.
This poem rich in potential and definitely one that benefits from re-reading.
The protagonist begins as a distanced version of Byron, but as contemporary readers refused to separate the poetic from the autobiographic, the lines between the 'I' of narrator, Childe Harold, and the author-poet begin to blur with each published Canto.
Although I did grow tired of the constant battle stanzas, there is no denying the incredible skill of Byron's work - or the plethora of highly quotable lines.
His exploration of the self through different guises, poetic styles, and cultural figures to the point of collapse is particularly effective. There is a depth to his string of allusions, and much to be found in the returns to comfort in process or movement, and the ever-present status of an exile.
Byron's poem is also unique within Romanticism as his sublime interactions with nature occur less through landscape, and more through the self-erasing, and ever-changing ocean.
This poem rich in potential and definitely one that benefits from re-reading.