The Influence of Byronism Until World War Ii

THE INFLUENCE OF BYRONISM UNTIL WORLD WAR II

1. Introduction (by Paola Enguix)

After having developed the analysis of Byronism in our previous papers about Byronism: Influences, Characteristics & Importance, in this paper we are going to analyze deeper the influences of Byronism in the posterior poetic stages until World War II. We will base our division on the English poetry timeline proposed by the Wikipedia in

We are going to talk about the reception of Byron by the community of young Victorian writers in the period, aiming to re-cast critical assumptions of the audience Byron was writing for, while exposing the culture industry which created and fostered the myth of Byron. Also about the Pre-Raphaelites, whose poetry shares many of the concerns of the painters; an interest in Medieval models, an almost obsessive attention to visual detail and an occasional tendency to lapse into whimsy.

Later we are going to analyze Byron’s influence in the 20th century, talking about the Georgian poets, one of the major grouping of the post-Victorian era before and after the First World War, whose poetry developed a reaction to the decadence of the 1890s and tended towards the sentimentalism, though they splited into socially-aware writersagainst the war, and the ones that remained technically conservative and traditionalist, and some joining the Modernist influences.

Also about those poets who began to emerge in the 1930s, born too late to have any real experience of the period before the First World War and that grew up in a period of social, economic and political turmoil, developingthemes of community, social injustice and war.

Finally, we will talk about the 1940s new generation of war poets, which owed something to the 1930s poets, but whose work grew out of the particular circumstances in which they found themselves living and fighting.

The later writers did not much opposition to Byron’s earlier influences on them. Furthermore, they drank from them, absorving each drop of knowledge, fascinated by the rare way Byron depicted reality, taking the issues of subjectivity, sexuality and canonicity. They ended defining themselves through fictions of personal development away from values associated with Byron.

Byron was not just an author but an unprecedent cultural phenomenon. He has not only affected the point of view of the writers in different places and decades, but also the novel, poetry and drama, as a branch of his poetic inheritance.

Byron created a sequel to his work without noticing, and the later generations owe him that much. And this legacy and influence is what we will analyze in this paper.

2. Influence of Byronism until World War II

2.1. Byron’s influence on Victorian writer Charlotte Bronte (by Mª José Jorquera)

2.2. The 20th Century
2.2.1. The first decades of the 20th Century(by Josué Álvarez)
2.2.2. The Thirties(by Manuela Elisa Blanes & Julia Fernández)

2.2.3. The Forties(by Jéssica Aguilar & Cristina Camps)

3. Conclusion(by Aina García & Mª Llanos García)