The heroic in Byron’s mock-epic novel

The Idea Of Heroism And The Heroic In Byron’s Mock-Epic Poem

Lord Byron: One Of The Greatest Romantic Poets –Word press.com

Byron’s epic poem ‘Don Juan’ deals with the Byronic hero. However the protagonist is not a straight-foward hero, as he has qualities of an anti-hero.

The Byronic hero is an important element of Romanticism poetry and was greatly influential for many other writers. Much of Byron’s poetry has a hero at the centre, and by far the most famous poem of this kind is the mock-epic Don Juan. Byron, like Juan, carried out various heroic feats during his lifetime. He travelled on a tour of Portugal, Spain, Gibraltar, Malta, Albania and Greece. Whilst on his travels he swam the entire Hellespont sea and saved the life of a young Turkish girl who was convicted of sexual misconduct, which was quite possibly the influence for Juan saving a little girl from being killed during the Russian siege of Ismail.

Sure enough, Don Juan is based on Byron’s own experiences and Juan could be seen as representing him. Peter J. Manning develops this idea when he says that the Byronic hero is “a fiction responsive to the fears and desires of its author.” (Byron’s Imperceptiveness to the English Word, Peter J. Manning, p.225). The slaughter of 25,000 Greeks by the Turks in spring 1822 led to a desperate plea for support. As a result the London Greek Committee was formed and Byron joined eagerly. He went out to Greece and commanded an elite private army to fight, however he would never set foot on the battlefield as he contracted a fever which led to his death. However, he was regarded by the Greek people as a national hero. Byron’s passion for Greek liberation from the Turks and his mock epic poem Don Juan both remained unfinished. He never actually fought, in much the same way that he didn’t succeed in completing Don Juan.

Conversely, the Byronic hero has both heroic and anti-heroic qualities, which amounts to difficulty when deciding whether to sympathize with him or not. The protagonist’s heroic qualities can be seen when Juan is first introduced and has some promise, he is described as having the typical characteristics of a hero – handsome and slender, however his mother doesn’t feel that he is yet a man. He is also wise, we can see this when Byron comments that, “An only son left with an only mother is brought up much more wisely than another.” (Duncan Wu, ed. 2006, Romanticism, An Anthology, third edition, p.946 ). Further on, the narrator tells the reader of how his mother encouraged him to learn the arts, languages (including Latin and Greek) and the sciences. Juan fervently read these books, “In all these he was much and deeply read”

It seems Byron is saying that being well read and learned is a heroic quality. For example, he is bought by a sultana and smuggled into her harem, he then makes his escape the next morning. He fights in the Russian siege of Ismael and is sent to St. Petersburg to inform Catharine the Great the news of their victory.

When looking closely at Don Juan we see that Byron goes into a considerable amount of detail concerning how he is going to write the poem, and that unlike many other poets who start mid-story, he will begin at the beginning. The narrator is therefore almost as prominent as the hero, as the introduction conveys more about the writer than it does the central character.

Byron’s chatty, digressive and ironic tone creates the mock-epic feel of the poem. This destabilizes the reader’s sense of what we are reading and why. The writer is very persuasive as he frequently interrupts the plot and digresses, so we often hear about the narrator’s experiences. Because of this it takes a long time to cover the plot as he gets distracted a lot, the narrator being very dominant.

Byron’s Don Juan Is Based On A Spanish Story

The poem is a variant of the original Spanish tale of Don Juan who seduced and slept with countless women. J.R. Jackson describes Byron’s Juan as being “no seducer, but he yields to seduction”, (J.R Jackson, 1980, Poetry of the Romantic Period, p.178) suggesting that he is passive when it comes to seducing women.

To conclude, it’s clear that Byron had a great interest in heroism and the heroic. This comes through in both his own desires and achievements as well as those of the Byronic hero. We can see from studying Byron’s poetry that the hero he created is not a typical hero, instead it is sometimes amoral, guilty of committing acts such as adultery and self-indulgence amounting to a particularly unique and fascinating literary character.
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