A League of Extraordinary Byrons: The Poet's Many Embodied Selves as Vehicles of Anxious Rebellion

Abstract

In four of Lord Byron's major works, Don Juan, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Manfred and Cain, we find major characters that embody a certain aspect of the poets broad and multifaceted self. As we follow these characters, it becomes clear that Byron uses these embodied selves as vehicles to express his anxieties regarding external structures imposed upon him. Byron wrestles with the structures of public image and scandal, impermanence, categorization, and imperialism. The titular characters of these texts transgress external structures due to their nature, and in their personal anguish and tragedies, Byron displays that breaking from these structures is often noble but implicitly brings suffering as well.