The first stanza “I want a hero” is about how he
wants someone to stand up and be that figure, someone that inspires and encourages
others to be better and how that is uncommon to want. It also talks about how
there have been so many people that have showed up over the years, that have claimed
they were a hero or tried to fill this role of hero but they have all ended up
being false heroes. The second stanza lists many political figures each
different in their own way. Some good, some not, some military, others royalty
but each a person who tried to stand as a hero of some kind. These two stanza
tells us that Byron’s chosen genre is the epic, which has three elements. One
it must be a trilogy or longer, two is that the time span must encompass years or more
and three it must contain a large back story or universe setting in which the
story takes place. More well-known works that are considered epics are J.R.R. Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings and Thousand and One Nights, where the stories
Aladdin, Ali Baba and Sinbad the Sailor come from. These two stanzas and Byron’s
choice in genre tell us the he is trying to influence the people. He is trying
to teach a way of thought that could convince the people to take a stand and
control their own futures. He wants them to see that the heroes of the past
that have all failed were part of the aristocracy and that they should try and
shape their own lives.
Also, when a poet/writer/litterateur chooses a literary form to work with, the author also takes into account (esp. with great authors) the literary history of the form, and what it means.
ReplyDeleteFoe example, in Don Juan, Byron uses the ottava rima rhyme scheme (which has a history of being part of the Italian epic tradition); this rhyme scheme sets off the mood of the poem as being serious, dealing with a serious subject-matter. Then we take into account the epic. The heroes of the past epics have been of a grand, almost superhuman status. Conversely, Byron is using Don Juan, an anti-hero.
Byron tells his epic of an anti-hero; this in and of itself is shocking and further imbeds his overall message that heroes as we have read them in the past not only don't exist anymore, but that they can't (as evidenced through the various failed attempts of French aristocracy/revolutionaries, etc.)