‘But I Was Born for Opposition’

The essay is concerned with Byron as a self-consciously oppositional poet but comes at the question by presenting and trying to understand the character of Victorian opposition to Byron’s opposition. It argues that the main reasons were Byron’s performance of feelings and the relationship of this to a forcefully presented negativity in fundamental areas to which Victorians knew that they had no answers, and which threatened their need to act as though their constant proclamation of moral certainties had some basis. It examines two stanzas from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage III to demonstrate this. It concludes by considering whether we now are better or worse at registering Byron’s oppositional force.