Lord Byron, one of the most significant poets of the Romantic Era, influenced literature by influencing not only the poetry of the time, but also changing opinions and values in society and the how they saw the meaning of love, life and death. Lord Byron and his poems reflected the time period and were transformed by the struggles and challenges he faced during his childhood. Each poem of Lord Byron is connected not only to his life but also to the Romantic era. Three of his most thought-provoking poems are “The Pilgrimage of Child Harold,” “The Darkness,” and “On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year.” Lord Byron's life from the beginning was different from most other childhoods growing up. He was born on 22 January 1788 in London. Born with a particular clubfoot, he moved with his mother to Scotland. Having this disability led Lord Byron to consider himself different, causing him to have a fragile self-esteem, making him sensitive to criticism (Noel). When he was 10, he was given an estate called Newstead Abbey and decided to go to Trinity College, but this quickly led him into debt. That summer he fell in love with his distant cousin Mary Chaworth but she grew tired of him. Byron was greatly affected by the breakup and this led him to write melancholy poems with her as a symbol of idealized and unattainable love for him (Moore). He quickly became one of the best-known English Romantic poets and befriended other poets, for example Percy Shelley and John Keats. Lord Byron was a satirist and was able to use poetry and his personality to capture the imagination of Europe (Sherwood). Some of his most famous works include “The Pilgrimage of Childe Harold” (1812-18) and “Don Juan” (1819-24) (Poetry Foundation). After a successful life writing literature in...... medium of paper ......ion, nd Sun 23 March 2014Priestman, Martin. Romantic Atheism: Poetry and Free Thought, 1780-1830. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1999. Questoa School. Sun. 23 March 2014.Moore, Thomas and George Gordon Byron. The Works of Lord Byron: with his letters, his diaries and his life. vol. 1. London: John Murray, 1835. Question School. Network. April 6, 2014.Noel, Roden. Life of Lord Byron. London: Walter Scott, 1890. Questoa School. Sun. March 23, 2014Rutherford, Andrew. Byron: a critical study. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1961. Question School. Sun. March 23, 2014.Sherwood, Margaret. Undercurrents of influence in English Romantic poetry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1934. Questiona School. Sat. March 1, 2014. Tobin, James E. Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Its Cultural Background: A Bibliography. New York: Byblos and Tannen, 1967. Question School. Sun. March 23 2014.
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