Romanticism - Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ( Lord Byron )

Summary:

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem in four parts written by Lord Byron. It was published between 1812 and 1818 and is dedicated to "Ianthe". The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands. In a wider sense, it is an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. The title comes from the term childe, a medieval title for a young man who was a candidate for knighthood.

n Canto 1, Bryon introduces Childe Harold, a young English nobleman who has been wasting his life with drinking, idleness, and making love to unsuitable women. The woman he does love he cannot have. Despondent, he leaves his family, his family home, his heritage. and his lands to travel, albeit with no clear destination. Perhaps, he thinks, he will find happiness and some meaning to his life once he leaves England.

Leaving, he sings a mournful song—the poem “Good Night”—bidding farewell to his homeland, to his parents, and to his wife and sons. 

Analysis:

There is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings in this narrative poem. As we see, the poem is flooded with emotions that the main character felt throughout his journey like, love, longing, grief, sadness, and even pleasure. It is also said in romanticism that te artist's feeling is his own law. In the poem, Childe Harold became a vehicle for Byron's own beliefs and ideas. By masking himself behind a literary artifice, Byron was able to express his view that "man's greatest tragedy is that he can conceive of a perfection which he cannot attain".