In this highly focused course on the Romantic poet Lord Byron, we will explore his life, his love, his faults, his poetry, his fame, and his time. BBC's 2003 TV film Byron, featured Johnny Lee Miller, will be used as an introduction to this course. A detailed examination of the important biographical facts and controversies which have been incorporated in this film will provide an overview of the poet's tumultuous life, make up for the simplification of the film, and introduce those works which will be read in their biographical context, in the hope of preparing the students for their appreciation of the poet's highly autobiographical poetry (the moods, not necessarily literal account of adventures).

The study of Byron's poetry will start with a selection of Byron's shorter poems ranging from 1808 to 1824, including the darkly witty drinking poem “Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed from a Skull," poems on innocent and unattainable love (“Maid of Athens," “To Thyrza," and “She Walks in Beauty”), heartfelt poems dedicated to his half-sister Augusta after Byron's self-exile (“Stanzas to Augusta” and “Epistle to August”), and the melancholy poem “On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year” composed three months before his death at the age of 36.

Included in the syllabus are also two of Byron's popular oriental tales (The Corsair and The Giaour), the narrative poem in Spenserian stanzas that made him famous overnight (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage), and two controversial works (the metaphysical play Cain and mock-epic masterpiece Don Juan).