George Gordon Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error
Childe Harold

is Byron's longest poem after the comic epic

Don Juan

. It has four cantos written in Spenserian stanzas, which consist of eight iambic pentameter lines followed by a one alexandrine (a twelve syllable iambic line), and rhyme ababbcbcc. The need to find four b rhymes and three c rhymes, and to manage the central and the final couplets, make this a difficult stanza to write in, but Byron claimed that he selected it because it “admits of every variety”. He started writing the poem on his European tour in 1809-11 and when the first two cantos were published in 1812 they propelled him more or less immediately to the height of fame. When he returned to the poem in 1816 his scandalous separation from his wife had forced him to leave England under a cloud of public…

2156 words

Citation: Mole, Tom. "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 June 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6044, accessed 19 March 2024.]

6044 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.