Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto the Fourth [June–July 1818]

Abstract

An analysis of the third and last iteration of Byron’s loco-descriptive long poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, of 1817, which concentrates on the nature of travel and the patterns travellers impose on what they perceive. So Byron uses patterns of parallel and contrast, or seeks for patterns when they are difficult to find (in Rome, for example, with its Classical and baroque monuments), and compares the ideal with the real in the same spirit, contrasting the art of sculpture with that of poetry.