George Gordon, Lord Byron, was the most famous and controversial of the Romantic poets. He created the archetypal Romantic hero who embodied the era's focus on emotion, imagination, and self-experience over reason and order. Byron's poetry and lifestyle came to represent the Romantic movement across Europe in the early 19th century. His unfinished epic poem Don Juan satirized social conventions through the adventures of its titular protagonist and showed Byron aiming to subvert the moralism of earlier Romantic works through his cynical and ironic style.

1. The most flamboyant and notorious ofthe major Romantics, George Gordon, Lord Byron, was likewise the most fashionable poet o fthe day. He created an
immensely popular Romantic hero—defiant, melancholy, haunted by secret guilt—for which, to many, he seemed the model. He is also a Romantic paradox: a leader
of the era’s poetic revolution. Byron captivated the Western mind and heart as few writers have, stamping upon nineteenth -century letters, arts, politics, even clothing
styles, his image and name as the embodiment of Romanticism.
During the Neoclassical period, the artist wants to draw up art with nature: it doesn’t mean that the artist must reproduced faithfully the natural particulars, but he has
to look only for the essence. The neoclassical writers gave importance to thought, reason and commonsense. The poetry was the artful treatment of the real life
happening into a poetic composition, portraying a fictional character.
During the Romantic period, nature has an important roll. The artist need to be interiorized with nature, because the knowledge ofgood and evil resides in nature,
whose voice talks into us. Going to discover nature, in fact, means going to discover humans, nature for romantic was a source of inspiration, a symbol oftruth and
unadulterated reality. The romantic writes gave important to emotion, imagination and selfexperience. The poetry expressed perso nal feelings ofthe poet as it is
spontaneous. A characteristic both poets is beliefin “natural order” and a search for harmony and reconciliation between the natural and human sphere. Many
romantic poets sought solace and peace in nature, and the also recognized the power world on men.
George Byron was born in London in 1788 and was educated at Harrow and Trinity College. In 1816 he left Britain and never returned. He traveled to Geneva, where
he met Shelley and then, he went in Italy, he lived a wild life in Venice and travelled to Rome. In 1823, Byron moved for Greece, where he formed a small army to
help free Greece from the Turks, he died ofa fever before he could fight. Byron became a legendary figure more known for his life than his poetry, he represent the
archetypal Romantic hero. When he was in southern Europe, he started Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a semiautobiographical poem. In 1818 he began work on Don
Juan; the first two cantos were denounced as immoral in England, but Byron continued to work on the poemfor the next five years.
Don Juan recounts the adventure ofits eponymous hero, who his sent abroad by his mother at the age of16 after a scandalous affair with Donna Julia, the young wife
of an elderly nobleman, and is shipwrecked on a Greek Island. The last cantos ofthe poemremained unfinished at the time of Byron’s death. In this last cantos take
form a satirical description ofconditions in England. Don Juan consist of16 cantos written in ottava rima to consent the accumulation ofcomic effects followed by a
surprise punch line at the end. Protagonist’s adventures are always viewed fromcynical, ironic distance of experience, and one could consider Don Juan an anti-lyrical
poem, because was write by Byron’s aimto sabotage the conservatismofearlier romantics.