ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with cantos I and II of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and move forward chronologically through Lord Byron’s major poetry to Childe Harold IV. Byron’s poetry continues to reward the study of its artistic aims and achievements per se, and there is much that still needs to be fully understood about Byron’s poetry which is necessarily overlooked by many of his latest critical admirers. The chapter looks at local examples of this within Byron’s poems, but also at the larger transitions which run through them, and a chronological study is the best way of looking at the latter. The chapter deals with the period between Childe Harold I and II and Beppo because Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is Byron’s major site of experimentation. It discusses how each canto moves Byron forward from what precedes it, and how each instalment of Childe Harold plays a role in the genesis of the poetry which follows it.
