Anthology of Ideas

Byron, intentionally or unintentionally, weaves himself into his poetry stamping it with his entire persona. His characters are part of himself; the poems are pieces of his mind; the events are based on experience. Byron’s poetry is an amalgamation of all aspects of Byron. This is truer in some poems than others: some are nearly biographical and others skillfully manipulate other’s perceptions of Byron. His poetry reveals the inner workings of his mind . Because of this, the voices in Byron’s poetry are not just the voices of Byron’s characters: they are the intermingling of the poet with the poem. One of the most pervasive and recognizable aspects of Byronic poetry is the Byronic hero who is a manifestation of parts of Byron’s own personality and thoughts. Byron’s “The Corsair” introduces the most Byronic of Byron’s heroes: Conrad. He then proceeds to emasculate him and proposes Gulnare, a former sex slave, as an alternative hero.

In Emma ((Page Numbers are for the Riverside Edition edited by Lionel Trilling)), Jane Austen presents characters who are uniquely human: each has their own rich personality and storied background. Through these characters, Austen is able to intimately explore the human condition, as she saw it, and highlight some of the issues of society and class in her world. To achieve this, Austen creates a world into which a reader can insert themselves through the gossip and unique perspective that the narrator and Emma provides; the reader’s perspective is not that of an all-seeing observer, but almost a character in its own right who may judge the characters as an equal participant and member of the community. From this perspective the reader is able to see characters as rich and complex individuals with whom the reader can acquaint themselves. In doing so, one can pass judgment on the characters not from the outside, but from the inside.

The characters of Mrs.

In the few lines that make up a single scene of Wordsworth’s “Prelude”, the personified Nature encourages the young Wordsworth to steal a boat and admonishes him for failing to resist the urge. Although the young Wordsworth only focused on the method Nature used to correct him, the adult Wordsworth recognized the contradiction and believed that Nature used this event to guide him and help him understand and control his human desires, and, in the process, demonstrate that the relationship between an individual and nature is the same as that of parent and child. Overall, this scene emphasizes the the contrast between the nature of an individual and Nature, the experience and the perception, and the child and the adult. Through these contrasts Wordsworth demonstrates that his perception of his surroundings were influenced by his own emotions and feelings as a child and by what he, as an adult, perceives the emotions he felt or should have felt as a boy.