拜伦与雪莱对比

呼伦贝尔学院

学期论文

题目：同一个时代的两个诗人

——拜伦与雪莱人物性格比较专业：英语

姓名：张颖

学号：2010041328

同一时代的两个诗人

——拜伦与雪莱人物性格比较

Tow Poets of the Same Period

Comparison Between Byron’s and Shelley’s Personality

Abstract: Byron and Shelly are romantic poets. They have differences as well as similarities. It has not only proud and aloof Byronic heroes, but also democratic heroes fought for lower class in Byron’s poems. And Shelley, whose poems are natural, splendid and imaginative. The differences between Byron’s and Shelley’s poems due to their different personalities and values. Byron has a contradictory and complex personality, but Shelley’s character is enthusiastic and simple.

Key words: Byron Shelley romanticism personality

Contents

Introduction .............................................................................................. .1 1. Pomes of Byron and Shelley ................................................................ .1 1.1 Pomes of Byron .............................................................................. ..1

1.2 Poem of Shelley (2)

2. Differences between Byron's and Shelley's personalities (2)

3. Influence of life on Byron and Shelley (5)

3.1 Influence of life on Byron (6)

3.2 Influence of life on Shelley (6)

Conclusion (7)

Bibliography (8)

Tow Poets of the Same Period

Comparison Between Byron’s and Shelley’s Personality

Introduction

Byron and Shelley are famous poets of Britain 19th century. They used poems as their weapons to criticize the darkness of society. They praised the people's revolutionary struggles in their poems. They eulogized the freedom and liberty at the same time. Byron's and Shelley's poems are full of passion and strong infection. They are excellent representatives of English Romanticism. However, as the poets in the same period, Byron and Shelley have differences as well as similarities. Byron was born in 1788, one year before French Revolution. Shelley was born in 1792, three years after French Revolution. They had similar family background and common aspiration. They grew up in a same social environment. All of these caused the common point in their poems. But, there are some differences on their poems. Byron like using satire and Shelley like using lyric. Byron’s poems are full of passion, but also have pessimism. Shelley’s poems are full of optimism and hope. The differences were just caused by the differences of their personalities.

1. Pomes of Byron and Shelley

Byron and Shelley are both romantic poets. Their poems are full of passion and imaginative. Influenced by French Revolution, Byron and Shelley advocated freedom, liberty and struggle. All of these made they have similarities on the theme and art performance of their poems. But , they have their own features at the same time.

1.1 Pomes of Byron

Byron is one of the most influential poets of the time. His literary career was closely linked with the struggle and progressive movements of his age. He opposed oppression and slavery, and has an ardent love for liberty. His poetry was popular at other countries as well as at Britain.

Byron’s poems are like the oratory, but his description is simple and fresh and often use vivid objects in his poems. Byron combined the romantic with satire in his poems. His poems exposed the darkness of the society, satirized the hypocrisy of the up class. But, his poems expressed the anguish and hopelessness to the life at the same time.

Because of the theme of fighting for common people, Byron’s poems were popular in the lower class. Protagonists in Byron’s poems fight for common people, but ignore the power of common people. They are lonely heroes without the support of people. So their story usually are tragedy. It can say that Byron’s poems have two sides and heroes in his poems also have complex characters.

1.2 Pomes of Shelley

Shelley is one of the leading romantic poets, an intense and original lyrical poet in the English language. As far as his lyric poems are concerned, he is regarded as one of the greatest of all English poets.

Different from Byron, Shelley’s poems are full of passion and hope. His poems are also exposed the darkness of society and criticized the cruel activities of the up class. But, it brings to the readers are hope and confidence. His poems are graceful lyrics and full of imaginative. It only has the optimistic attitude to the life and future.

Same as the Byron, protagonists in Shelley’s poems help the poor people to against with the hypocritical noblemen. But the difference is they are not lonely heroes, they stand together with the common people and know the importance of the common people’s power. If Byron’s poems bring the fighting will and also the pessimism to the readers, Shelley bring all the optimism and hope to the people.

2.Differences between Byron’s and Shelley’s personalities

Fighting for freedom and democracy is the common theme in Byron’s and Shelley’s poems. In writing style, they all belong to romantic poets. But, there are also some differences between their poems. Byron used satire to expose the darkness of the society. Shelley combined lyric with philosophy in his poems to predict a bright future. They have different readers and have different influences on the British

literature. All of these is just because their different personalities. Their poems can demonstrate this well.

Byron is good at satire, he wrote in Don Juan:

Besides the ministers and underlings,

Who must be courteous to the accredited

Diplomatists of rather wavering kings,

Until their royal riddle’s fully read,

They very clerks―those somewhat dirty springs

Of office or the house of office fed

By foul corruption into streams―even they

Were hardly rude enough to earn their pay.

And insolence no doubt is what they are

Employed for, since it is their daily labour

In the dear offices of peace or war

And should you doubt, pray ask of your next neighbour,

When for a passport or some other bar

To freedom he applied (a grief and abore),

If he found not this spawn of tax―born riches,

Like lap dogs, the least civil sons of bitches.

Byron used the poem to satire the duplicity, bully and brutality of English government. He was full of rebellion and angry. But at the same time, Byron also expressed the pessimism and his arrogant personality in his poems. Such as he wrote in the Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage:

I have not loved the world, nor the world me;

I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed

To its idolatries a patient knee,

Nor coined my cheek to smiles, ―nor cried aloud

In worship of an echo; in the crowd

They could not deem me one of such―I stood

Among them, but not of them―in a shroud

Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,

Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued

Byron has a contradictory character. He was arrogant, also inferior; full of passion, also indifferent to the life. He is a radical, but has negative attitude to the world. He fought for the people who from lower class, but ignored the power of the common people. Just because his complex and contradictory personality, Byron created many Byronic heroes in his poems. All these protagonists were full of fiery passions and unbending will. They were against tyranny and injustice of the society. But they were all lone fighters without the support of the common people. Most of them had a tragic endings. There is no doubt that all the Byronic heroes have Byron’s shadow.

Different from Byron, Shelley eulogized the happy life of future. He likes using lyric in his poems. He always expressed the hope for tomorrow in ends of his poems.Shelley wrote in The Revolt of Islam

These perish as the good and great of yore

Have perish, and their murderers will repent,―

Yes, vain and barren tears shall flow before

Yon smoke has faded from the firmament

Even for this cause, that ye who must lament

The death of those that made this world so fair

Cannot recall them now; but there is lent

To man the wisdom of a high despair

When such can die, and he live on and linger here

It is just because Shelley’s enthusiastic character which made Shelley wrote the poems with optimism of the life. From his poems, readers would not feel pessimism about the death of the Leons. Instead, it makes the people full of the unbending confidence for the great future. We also can learn Shelley’s optimism from his Ode to the West Wind

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Shelley described the destructive power of the west wind to simple that the power of common people will destroy the darkness and injustice of the society and built a new world which is beautiful, equal and hopeful. So, Shelley said in the end: If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind.

Different from Byron, Shelley’s passion developed into hope and confidence for the bright future instead of abhorring to the life. All hopeful and optimistic expression of Shelley is because his pure and optimistic personality which is different from Byron.

3.The influence of life on Byron and Shelley

From the poems, we can learn the differences personalities between Byron and Shelley. Byron and Shelley had different comments and different effects on literature in the literary history. The reason is their differences on creative personality. Their different life and experiences is the main factor which influenced their formation of character. Although they have similar family background, they have different childhood and different experiences in their adulthood. All of these cause the differences of their personalities and the differences of their poems.

3.1 Influence of life on Byron

Byron was born in a noble family, but he had an unhappy childhood. His father died when Byron was 4 and his grumpy mother treated him very bad. Byron was often bullied by other children because of his inborn disability. All these shaped Byron into a arrogant also inferior, radical also negative man. Byron inherited the aristocracy on the House of Lords in 1809. Then Byron was proud of his title in his whole life and was more arrogant than before.

Just because of this personality, many protagonists in Byron’s poems have complex characters just like Byron. They opposed with the darkness society and fought for the common people. they have the unbending belief. But they are lonely heroes without the support of people. They usually had a tragic ending. Such as the protagonist Manfred in Manfred, his anguish and hopelessness reflected the same thought of Byron. But he has commendable persistence at the same time. He yelled:“Forward! Forward! Forward!”when he was dying. The heroes in Byron’s poems just Byron himself at some point.

3.2 Influence of life on Shelley

Same as the Byron, Shelley was born a noble family, too. He is the son of a prosperous squire. He was supposed to be a gentleman of wealth and title. But he did not grew up as the expectation of his families. Shelley proved a good classical scholar, but he was not happy in fact. He was called mad Shelley and was known as his enthusiasm for studies in electricity, chemistry and astronomy. The persecutions which he endured and witnessed at school influenced him has a lifelong detestation of tyranny and violence.

Influenced by the literature of French Revolutionary, Shelley went to Oxford with the plan for changing the system of society. He and Thomas Jefferson wrote the Necessity of Atheism in order to convinced that religious were harmful to man’s happiness. Just because of this, Shelley lost his valuable education at Oxford, and this is no doubt that it was a disaster for him.

Because of influence of French Revolutionary, Shelley became an optimistic and a strong man in stead of a negative and a hopeless man. Just like his poems: Queen

Mab is a revolutionary poem condemning tyranny and exploitation and the unjust war waged by rich to plunder wealth. Revolt of Islam expressed his political and aesthetic ideas. Ode to the West Wind showed his optimistic attitude towards to the life.

Conclusion

Karl Marx said:“ The real difference between Byron and Shelley is this: those who understand them and love them rejoice that Byron died at thirty-six, because if he had lived he would become a reactionary bourgeois; they grieve that Shelley died at twenty-nine, because if he was essentially a revolutionist and he would always have been one of advanced guard of socialism.”Although Byron and Shelley are both against with the cruel and injustice society, and hope people from lower class be free and liberated. Their differences on personality is obvious. Byron was a man who has complex and contradictory personality. Shelley was a man who has a united and pure ideology. Byron satirized and exposed the darkness of the society. Shelley was full of optimistic to give readers the hope for a bright future. Just because the differences between Byron and Shelley, they could become the two most excellent poets of romanticism.

Bibliography

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