Let's Talk Romance: the Byronic Hero

I just passed in a creative project in Victorian Literature in which I first defined the Romantic hero and then searched for him in the novels of the Victorian Period. I thought I'd share some interesting tidbits:

Here's what Northrop Frye (an important Canadian theorist) has to say about the Romantic (and more specifically, the Byronic) hero:

“The so-called Byronic hero is often a Romantic version of the natural man, who, like Esau or Ishmael, is an outcast, a solitary much given to communing with untamed nature, and who thus represents the potentially expanding and liberating elements in that nature. He has great energy, often great powers of leadership, and even his vices are dignified enough to have some aesthetic attraction. He is often aristocratic in birth or behaviour, with a sense that, like Esau, he is the dispossessed rightful heir – here the theme combines with the sense of nostalgia for a vanished aristocracy. When he is evil, there is often the feeling that, as with Byron's Cain, his evil is comprehensible, that he is not wholly evil any more than society is wholly good, and that even his evil is a force that society has to reckon with” (30-31).

“[T]he “Byronic” hero...is placed outside the structure of civilization and therefore represents the force of physical nature, amoral or ruthless, yet with a sense of power, and often of leadership, that society has impoverished itself by rejecting” (41).

Mmm...doesn't that sound like every juicy male hero in romance fiction that you've ever lusted after? Here's another, similar description:

“...A man greater than others in emotion, capability, and suffering. Only among wild and vast forms of nature – the ocean, the precipices and glaciers of the Alps – can he find a counterpart to his own titanic passions. Driven by a demon within, he is fatal to himself and others; for no one can resist his hypnotic fascination and authority. He has committed a sin that itself expressions his superiority: lesser men could not even conceive a like transgression” (Perkins 782)

It makes me a little dreamy just to write out these descriptions – the Byronic hero IS the modern romance hero! It's simply amazing that these parallels are so obvious and yet no one's really talking about them.

I have a ton more ideas I'd love to write out, including my thoughts the fascinating concept of "Romantic agony" that Frye discusses briefly, but I've learned from reading other people's blogs that if it's too long, it doesn't get read, so I'll parcel out my exciting tidbits a little at a time.

Works Cited

Frye, Northrop. A Study of English Romanticism. New York:      Random House, 1968.
Perkins, David, ed. “George Gordon, Lord Byron:      Introduction.” English Romantic Writers. San Diego: HBJ,      1967. 779-787.