how does the portrayal of the romantic hero

7/31/2019 How Does the Portrayal of the Romantic Hero

1/14

By Sebastian Bell


2/14

A romantic hero is the protagonist of a literary workthat is either in love or discovering love throughout thecourse of the work.

Characteristics that are common within a romantichero include: Melancholy

Contemplative

Tortured Isolated

Prone to grand or obscene gestures of devotion.


3/14

Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)

Don Juan (Lord Byron)

Jane Eyre (Bronte)

Twilight (Meyers)


4/14

Act 2 (the chase)

O! Swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, Thatmonthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love

prove likewise variable all young men are fickle inlove.

Romeo abandoning his love for Rosaline because ithurts him and gives nothing back (dramatic irony at

its best) Paris who tries to win Juliet the conventional way is

never seen as a true rival for her affections.


5/14

"Who Ever Loved, That Loved Not At First Sight. -Christopher Marlowe (Shakespearian contemporary)

Cedric Watts Harvester New Critical Introductions

to Shakespeare. Peter Holding Romeo and Juliet (Text and

performance)

John Mahoney and Stewart Martin Letts explore

Romeo and Juliet


6/14

Cantos 1,2 and 4 are perhaps the most interesting, theyfeature a young Don Juan untutored in lovediscovering his way.

Donna Julia Haidee

Who chose to gowhere'er he had a mind, And neverdream'd his lady was concern'd About Don Jose,

Juans father and a prophecy of what the boy willbecome.


7/14

Anne Crow Cynic or Romantic

Stephen Bygrave Reading Byron

James Wilson - Tirso, Molire, and Byron: The

Emergence of Don Juan as Romantic Hero Donald low Byron selected poetry and Prose


8/14

Edward Rochester passionate but morally bankrupt

John Rivers moral but passionless

though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have

something in my brain and heart, in my blood andnerves, that assimilates me mentally to him.

this is not love at first sight or even love at sight at all.This is physical, carnal, love and its modality is action

and touch, smell, taste, more than the distant sense ofsight and hearing.


9/14

Penny Vincenzi - Romantic heroes: here's to you, MrRochester

most connected with the grosser and more animal

portion of our nature; and that the detestable moralityof the most prominent character in the story isaccompanied with every sort of palliation short ofunblushing justification - Rambler (1848).

Sandra Gilbert - The Madwoman in the Attic: TheWoman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century LiteraryImagination.


10/14

Edward Cullen

And so the lion fell in love with the lambWhat asick, masochistic lion.

Different species yet drawn together. Lust or love for Bella. She seems to be in love without

ever speaking to Edward. Keeps describing him asbeautiful.

Edward becomes moody and distant on falling in love,confused. Runs away at first.

Midnight sun.


11/14

Love

Romeo

Edward Cullen

Don Juan for Haidee

Jane Eyre

Romeo

Bella

Edward (Thirst)

Lust


12/14

For every character love is always forbidden in thesedifferent works. What divides can be a number of things;family, class, species or in Don Juans case other men havefirst claim.

There is always a character set aside who would be moresuitable, if the hero was not so keen to follow there heartinto misery.

This fight against public censor seems to be part of the

appeal for the lovers, either subconsciously or knowingly. Tamara Coble - Literary themes: Forbidden love in classical

literature


13/14

That the Romantic hero has not changed all that muchover the last 500 hundred years.

That society wants the search for love to be a struggle.

When the conflict that the lovers must endure isovercome, the love affair is no longer relevant to theaudience and the work always ends soon after.

We, the audience, want the hero to fly in the face of

social convention to woo there partner.Love matures all of the romantic heroes.


14/14

(Do you have any questions in French, the language ofromance)

how does the portrayal of the romantic hero

Documents