NOTES

ON THE BYRONIC HERO

Byronic heroa romanticized antihero who possesses a wicked character. He is an
idealized but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of Lord Byron, who was
characterized by his ex-lover Lady Caroline Lamb as being mad, bad and dangerous to
know. The Byronic hero first appears in Byrons semi-autobiographical epic narrative
poem Childe Harolds Pilgrimage (1812-18). The literary predecessors of the Byronic hero
in English can be traced back to Miltons Lucifer and to the villains and tyrants of Gothic
fiction. After Childe Harolds Pilgrimage, the Byronic hero made an appearance in many of
Byrons other works, including his closet play Manfred (1817). Byrons influence was
manifested by many authors and artists of the Romantic movement and by writers of
Gothic fiction during the 19th century, as in Polidoris The Vampyre (1819). The Byronic
hero is also featured in many different contemporary novels, and it is clear that Lord
Byrons work continues to influence modern literature as the precursor of a commonly
encountered type of anti-hero.

Conventionally, the figure:

is a young and attractive male with a bad reputation
defies authority and conventional morality
becomes paradoxically ennobled by his rejection of virtue
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Byronic heroes are associated with:

destructive passions, conflicting emotions, bipolar tendencies
selfish brooding, unpredictable moodiness
indulgence in personal pains
alienation/rejection from their communities, a distaste for social institutions and social
norms
a lack of respect for rank and privilege
persistent loneliness; often an exile, outcast, or outlaw
intense introspection, highly self-critical and/or self-destructive
fiery rebellion
struggles with integrity
a troubled past
being cynical, demanding, and/or arrogant
___________________________________________________
His persistent character is that of a passionate and remorse-tornbut unrepentant
wanderer
He is an alien, mysterious, and gloomy spirit, immensely superior in his passions and
powers to the common run of humanity, whom he regards with disdain
He harbors the torturing memory of an enormous, nameless guilt that drives him toward
an inevitable doom

 He is in his isolation absolutely self-reliant, inflexibly pursuing his own ends according to
his self-generated moral code against any oppositionhuman or supernatural
He exerts an attraction on other characters that is the more compelling because it
involves their terror at his obliviousness to ordinary human concerns and values
(i.e., chicks, even good ones, dig him)

The Byronic hero is sometimes known as the villain-hero, the Satanic hero, or the
Promethean hero.

Generally, these are villains of stories who either

1. pose as a hero at the beginning of the story or
2. simply possesses enough heroic characteristics (charisma, sympathetic past, etc.)
that either the reader or the other characters see him as more than a simple
charlatan or bad guy

More specifically:

Satanic hero: a villain-hero whose nefarious deeds and justifications of them make him a
more interesting character than the rather bland good hero.

 Example: The origin of this prototype comes from Romantic misreadings of Miltons
Paradise Lost, whose Satan poets like Blake and Shelley regarded as a far more compelling
figure than the moralistic God of Book III.
Gothic examples: Radcliffes Montoni, Wordsworths Rivers, Polidoris Ruthven.

Promethean hero: a villain-hero who has done good but only by performing an over-
reaching or rebellious act.
Prometheus: (from ancient Greek mythology) saved mankind but only after stealing fire
and ignoring Zeus order that mankind should be kept in a state of subjugation.
Mary Shelleys Frankenstein is tellingly subtitled the Modern Prometheus.

Byronic hero: a later variation of the antithetically mixed villain-hero.
Aristocratic, suave, moody, handsome, solitary, secretive, brilliant, cynical, sexually
intriguing, and nursing a secret wound, he is renowned because of his fatal attraction for
female characters and readers.
This darkly attractive and very conflicted male figure surfaces everywhere in 19th- and
20th-century art.

Damons character is Byronic

As is DeCaprios character in Catch Me if You Can

Johnny Depp in Blow

Richard Gere in First Knight

James Dean, probably the most obvious Byronic figure in 20th-century American film

Male Byronic figures, such as Heathcliff and Rochester, are common in Bronte novels



In many ways, youll see that the qualities that mark this type of hero represent the
antithesis of traditional heroism: this hero is not the leader of his people or a
representative of his country. He is instead the archrebel and it is his rebellious energy,
his moody self-isolation, that is the source (to use a phrase from Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
of his savage grandeur.

In his Statesmans Manual, Coleridge warned against the appeal of the rebellious Romantic
hero who functions as a law unto himself. Coleridge, as a philosophical conservative,
perceived the danger of giving power to men who could subdue every other consideration
to their own ambition. (Think of the mariner in his Rime of the Ancient Mariner.)

We are supposed to admire the courageousness of the Byronic/Romantic hero, who,
unlike others, is unafraid to explore even the darkest emotions and natural powers
In Byronic heroism, there is an emphasis on introspection (including an exploration of the
darker side of the mind), leading to what Harold Bloom has termed the internalization of
the quest romance, in which one does not quest in the material world but in the world of
the mind. Indeed, the Romantic hero goes so far as to believe that the mind is its own
place, and in itself/ Can make a Heavn of Hell, a Hell of Heavn, quoting Miltons Paradise
Lost. Instead of the external battles of old, readers are given an internal battle or
psychomachia. So what? If one is able to create exclusively through ones own mind,
there is no need, then, for God, nature or even women to ensure creation.
The Byronic/Romantic hero is concerned with ideals rather than convention. These
characters flout all conventions and laws in their search for something beyond the
ordinary.
The Byronic/Romantic hero exhibits a tendency to suffer; after all, the search for
transcendence is, almost by necessity, doomed to failure. These figures are searching for
something that is beyond the everyday world, something that therefore cannot be had in
the world. As a result, they are often undone by the world of material objects and by the
limitations of the flesh. One result of this impossible quest or drive is that it uses up the
physical body; the search can often be fatal.
The Byronic/Romantic hero puts everything on the line in search of intensity of feeling,
which sometimes puts him on the brink of madness.
The Byronic/Romantic hero values (self-)knowledge over brute strength, which helps to
distinguish this figure from the epic heroes of old.
The Byronic/Romantic heros quest for extremes of emotion is coupled with a search for
the extreme landscapes of nature, i.e. the sublime. Example: Satan is often represented by

Romantic artists in sublime landscapes that would normally be the clime of Romantic
heroes.