Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ( German: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage) is one of the best known and most successful works of the British poet Lord Byron. The epic poem was published 1812-1818.

The title goes to the medieval word " childe " ( German: squire ) back for a young candidate for knighthood.

Content

The work, a long narrative poem describes the travels of a young man looking out of disappointment about his life of luxury distraction in foreign lands. It brings out the melancholy and disappointment expressed, which was felt by a generation that was the post-revolutionary and Napoleonic wars tired.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage consists of four Canti, which are written in Spenserstrophen, each consisting of eight iambic pentameter followed by an alexandrine zwölfsilbigen iambic, with the rhyme sequence ABABBCBCC.

The plant has strong autobiographical elements. The first part is based on Lord Byron's travels 1809-1811 over Portugal, Spain and Malta into the Ottoman Empire, in the center of civilization, to the Parthenon in Athens. In the later Canti the author occurs even on the scene, so the distinction between protagonist and author is becoming increasingly difficult. Childe Harold was a vehicle for Byron's own beliefs and ideas; in the preface to the third book writes Byron, his hero is simply an expression of itself

Importance

The publication of the first Canto was a sensation. " One morning I woke up and was famous," Byron is quoted as saying. Women in particular were fascinated by the character of Harold, his premonitions and unspeakable vices. Lord Byron quickly became the favorite of the influential aristocrats of the time.

The work introduced the literary archetype of the Byronic Hero, a form of anti-hero, an outsider who puts his own personality over the world go by.

Adaptations

• Childe Harold's Pilgrimage inspired Hector Berlioz to the tone poem Harold en Italie.

Print editions

• The Poems and Plays of Lord Byron. Vol 2: Poetry and the Drama.. Series: Everyman's Library, 487 JM Dent & Sons, London 1910 and ö, 1926, pp. 1-124
• Complete Works, Volume 1: " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage " and other narrative poems. Übers Otto Gildemeister and Alexander Neidhardt. Artemis & Winkler, 1996 ISBN 3538052743 Mannheim