Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial, illicit, adulterous, lustful
Social Context: Enlightenment, revolution, Industrial revolution, Empire
LIT TERMS: pentameter, alliteration, sexual language, Byronic ryhme, Byronic hero, rhyme
scheme
Byron – Don Juan
LQ: Can I analyse how Byron presents lust and illicit love in Canto
1 of Don Juan?
Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial, illicit, adulterous, lustful
Social Context: Enlightenment, revolution, Industrial revolution, Empire
LIT TERMS: pentameter, alliteration, sexual language, Byronic ryhme, Byronic hero, rhyme
scheme
Outstanding progress: well-chosen quotations, sophisticated
language used, literary devices analysed, effect on reader
argued with perceptive points made, alternative
interpretations revealed, developed consideration of social
and historical context
Excellent progress: well-chosen quotations, literary devices
analysed, effect on reader discussed, alternative
interpretations considered and social context mentioned
Byron – Don Juan
LQ: Can I analyse how Byron presents lust and illicit love in Canto
1 of Don Juan?
Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial, illicit, adulterous, lustful
Social Context: Enlightenment, revolution, Industrial revolution, Empire
LIT TERMS: pentameter, alliteration, sexual language, Byronic ryhme, Byronic hero, rhyme
scheme
Each group has an
extract of writing about
Byron.
Reduce to 3 sentences.
Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial, illicit, adulterous, lustful
Social Context: Enlightenment, revolution, Industrial revolution, Empire
LIT TERMS: pentameter, alliteration, sexual language, Byronic ryhme, Byronic hero, rhyme
scheme
Review of Don Juan:
A sense of guilt runs through these works – nameless, vaguely sexual, inescapable. It's a
guilt that adolescents know about. The Byronic hero is defined by it. If it weren't for sex,
he might be noble and good, as well as handsome, courageous, intelligent and charming.
But sex always gets in the way.
One of the great strange things about it is that it isn't at all about sexual guilt. The Don
drifts disastrously from encounter to encounter and loves and grieves through each of
them, sincerely and sweetly. He suffers expulsion, shipwreck, enslavement, war,
celebrity – without any effect on his ability to love or grieve again. The problem for the
Byronic hero is that he can't get over anything; the problem for Don Juan is that he can
Shelley instantly recognised it as Byron's masterpiece; Byron lost his publisher over it.
John Murray wanted him to cut some of his blasphemies – he moved too quickly in it
from gay to grave. "Is it not life?" Byron replied. "Is it not the thing? – Could any man
have written it – who has not lived in the world? – and tooled in a post-chaise? In a
hackney coach? In a Gondola? Against a wall? In a court carriage? In a vis a vis? – on a
table? – and under it?"
Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial, illicit, adulterous, lustful
Social Context: Enlightenment, revolution, Industrial revolution, Empire
LIT TERMS: pentameter, alliteration, sexual language, Byronic ryhme, Byronic hero, rhyme
scheme
The Byronic hero presents an idealised, but flawed character whose
attributes include: great talent; great passion; a distaste for society and
social institutions; a lack of respect for rank and privilege (although
possessing both); being thwarted in love by social constraint or death;
rebellion; exile; an unsavory secret past; arrogance; overconfidence or
lack of foresight; and, ultimately, a self-destructive manner. These types
of characters have since become ubiquitous in literature and politics.
As a boy, his character is described as a "mixture of affectionate
sweetness and playfulness, by which it was impossible not to be
attached", although he also exhibited "silent rages, moody sullenness
and revenge" with a precocious bent for attachment and obsession.[72]
He described his first intense feelings at age eight for Mary Duff, his
distant cousin:
Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial, illicit, adulterous, lustful
Social Context: Enlightenment, revolution, Industrial revolution, Empire
LIT TERMS: pentameter, alliteration, sexual language, Byronic ryhme, Byronic hero, rhyme
scheme
"How very odd that I should have been so devotedly fond of that girl, at an age when I
could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word and the effect! My mother
used always to rally me about this childish amour, and at last, many years after, when I
was sixteen, she told me one day, 'O Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh, and your
old sweetheart, Mary Duff, is married to Mr. C***.' And what was my answer? I really
cannot explain or account for my feelings at that moment, but they nearly threw me into
convulsions...How the deuce did all this occur so early? Where could it originate? I
certainly had no sexual ideas for years afterwards; and yet my misery, my love for that girl
were so violent, that I sometimes doubt if I have ever been really attached since. Be that
as it may, hearing of her marriage several years after was like a thunder-stroke — it nearly
choked me — to the horror of my mother and the astonishment and almost incredulity of
every body. And it is a phenomenon in my existence (for I was not eight years old) which
has puzzled, and will puzzle me to the latest hour of it; and lately, I know not why, the
recollection (not the attachment) has recurred as forcibly as ever...But, the more I reflect,
the more I am bewildered to assign any cause for this precocity of affection.”
Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial, illicit, adulterous, lustful
Social Context: Enlightenment, revolution, Industrial revolution, Empire
LIT TERMS: pentameter, alliteration, sexual language, Byronic ryhme, Byronic hero, rhyme
scheme
Byron also became attached to Margaret Parker, another distant cousin.
While his recollection of his love for Mary Duff is that he was ignorant of adult sexuality
during this time, and was bewildered as to the source of the intensity of his feelings, he
would later confess that:
"My passions were developed very early — so early, that few would believe me — if I were
to state the period — and the facts which accompanied it. Perhaps this was one of the
reasons that caused the anticipated melancholy of my thoughts — having anticipated life.”
This is the only reference Byron himself makes to the event, and he is ambiguous as to how
old he was when it occurred. After his death, his lawyer wrote to a mutual friend telling
him a "singular fact" about Byron's life which was "scarcely fit for narration". But he
disclosed it nonetheless, thinking it might explain Byron's sexual "propensities":
"When nine years old at his mother's house a Scotch girl [May, sometimes called Mary,
Gray, one of his first caretakers] used to come to bed to him and play tricks with his
person.”
Gray later used this sexual abuse as a means of ensuring his silence if he were to be
tempted to disclose the "low company" she kept during drinking binges. She was later
dismissed, supposedly for beating Byron when he was 11.
Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial, illicit, adulterous, lustful
Social Context: Enlightenment, revolution, Industrial revolution, Empire
LIT TERMS: pentameter, alliteration, sexual language, Byronic ryhme, Byronic hero, rhyme
scheme
SECTIONS OF CANTO 1
1. Type(s) of love
2. Analyse for language,
structural techniques
used in presenting love
3. Any social/contextual
points?
EXT: how is FORM worth
noting?
Outstanding progress: wellchosen quotations, sophisticated
language used, literary devices
analysed, effect on reader
argued with perceptive points
made, alternative
interpretations revealed,
developed consideration of
social and historical context
Excellent progress: wellchosen quotations, literary
devices analysed, effect on
reader discussed,
alternative interpretations
considered and social
context mentioned
Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial, illicit, adulterous, lustful
Social Context: Enlightenment, revolution, Industrial revolution, Empire
LIT TERMS: pentameter, alliteration, sexual language, Byronic ryhme, Byronic hero, rhyme
scheme
SECTIONS OF CANTO 1
Join with another group
Once you have fed back
ideas, link to wider
reading
Outstanding progress: wellchosen quotations, sophisticated
language used, literary devices
analysed, effect on reader
argued with perceptive points
made, alternative
interpretations revealed,
developed consideration of
social and historical context
Excellent progress: wellchosen quotations, literary
devices analysed, effect on
reader discussed,
alternative interpretations
considered and social
context mentioned
Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial, illicit, adulterous, lustful
Social Context: Enlightenment, revolution, Industrial revolution, Empire
LIT TERMS: pentameter, alliteration, sexual language, Byronic ryhme, Byronic hero, rhyme
scheme
Outstanding progress: wellchosen quotations, sophisticated
language used, literary devices
analysed, effect on reader
argued with perceptive points
made, alternative
interpretations revealed,
developed consideration of
social and historical context
Feedback to class
Excellent progress: wellchosen quotations, literary
devices analysed, effect on
reader discussed,
alternative interpretations
considered and social
context mentioned
Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial, illicit, adulterous, lustful
Social Context: Enlightenment, revolution, Industrial revolution, Empire
LIT TERMS: pentameter, alliteration, sexual language, Byronic ryhme, Byronic hero, rhyme
scheme
How does Byron present
love in the first Canto of
his poem “Don Juan”?
2 paras:
1. close analysis of Don
Juan
2. Wider reading link
Outstanding progress: wellchosen quotations, sophisticated
language used, literary devices
analysed, effect on reader
argued with perceptive points
made, alternative
interpretations revealed,
developed consideration of
social and historical context
Excellent progress: wellchosen quotations, literary
devices analysed, effect on
reader discussed,
alternative interpretations
considered and social
context mentioned
Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial, illicit, adulterous, lustful
Social Context: Enlightenment, revolution, Industrial revolution, Empire
LIT TERMS: pentameter, alliteration, sexual language, Byronic ryhme, Byronic hero, rhyme
scheme
How do you imagine
people received such an
epic poem?
Who was his audience?
Outstanding progress: wellchosen quotations, sophisticated
language used, literary devices
analysed, effect on reader
argued with perceptive points
made, alternative
interpretations revealed,
developed consideration of
social and historical context
Excellent progress: wellchosen quotations, literary
devices analysed, effect on
reader discussed,
alternative interpretations
considered and social
context mentioned