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Article: Byron's Revisited Haunts.(19th-century poet, Lord Byron)(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Studies in Romanticism
- Article date:
- June 22, 2000
- Author:
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BEFORE HE LEFT ENGLAND IN A FLURRY OF SCANDAL, AND BEFORE HE created that most disillusioned of expatriates, Childe Harold, Lord Byron was irresistibly drawn to self-exile. In particular he paid close attention to the example of Shakespeare's misanthropic exile, Timon of Athens. Not only did Byron fashion Harold in the mold of Timon, arranging for his character to escape, like the disillusioned Athenian, from the "heartless parasites of present cheer" (Canto I, line 75);(1) three years before the splashy publication of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Cantos I & II (1812), the young Lord Byron was looking in the mirror and seeing Timon. "Weary of love, of life, ...