Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know
This is my entry in our Mix Exchange. I drew George Gordon, Lord Byron, the Trope Namer for a whole type of character. Given that my ambition is to have a literary device named after myself (bonus points if I manage to die a martyr to someone else's cause!) it's fair to say that Byron is an inspiration.
TVTropes describes the Byronic Hero....
While they can be good people, Byronic Heroes tend to be morally neutral and largely concerned with their immediate self-interest. However, they are often perceived as being lower on the morality scale owing to unpleasant characteristics such as conflicting emotions, poor integrity, the status of exile, a lack of respect for rank or privilege, a troubled past, cynicism, arrogance, and self-destructiveness. They also have a number of characteristics which are intended as controversial moral failings, at least at the time of writing. Values Dissonance may confuse the intent of some of these traits. Take a classical Byronic Hero(such as Lord Byron himself), who is a nonconformist with a dislike for social norms, introspective, struggles with his sexuality, and is importantly a loner prone to Melodrama. Now, think of this in a time before All Girls Want Bad Boys was mainstream, and you're getting at the real heart of the ideal. Also, they tend to be Jerkass Woobies.
A Byronic hero may have a vaguely suggested horrible crime behind him. This crime may never been made explicit; may indeed be so vague as to suggest that the hero is over-dramatizing himself.
And Wikipedia writes my liner notes...
1. Modern Don Juan - Buddy Holly
"He has no indisposition that I know of but love, desperate love, the worst of all maladies in my opinion."
2. (If You Were) In My Movie - Suzanne Vega
His nostalgic poems about his Harrow friendships express "consciousness of sexual differences that may in the end make England untenable to him"
3. Addicted to Bad Ideas- - The World / Inferno Friendship Society
Byron racked up numerous debts as a young man, due to what his mother termed a "reckless disregard for money"...
4. Big and Bad - Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
In his own words, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous"
5. My Life - Billy Joel
Byron went on the Grand Tour, then customary for a young nobleman. The Napoleonic Wars forced him to avoid most of Europe, and he instead turned to the Mediterranean. Correspondence among his circle of Cambridge friends also suggests that a key motive was the hope of homosexual experience, and other theories saying that he was worried about a possible dalliance with the married Mary Chatsworth.
6. In Taberna - Carl Orff
His wife Annabella coined the term "Byromania" to refer to the commotion surrounding him
7. Desire - U2
In 1812, Byron embarked on a well-publicised affair with the married Lady Caroline Lamb that shocked the British public. Byron eventually broke off the relationship and moved swiftly on to others, but Lamb never entirely recovered
8. Fire In Freetown - K'naan
As a child, Byron had seen little of his half-sister Augusta Leigh; in adulthood, he formed a close relationship with her that has been interpreted by some as incestuous, and by others as innocent. Augusta (who was married) gave birth on 15 April 1814 to her third daughter, Elizabeth Medora Leigh
10. We Both Go Down Together - The Decemberists
Cogni could not read or write, and she left her husband to move into Byron's Venice house. Their fighting often caused Byron to spend the night in his gondola; when he asked her to leave the house, she threw herself into the Venetian canal
11. Going Under - Evanescence
In the summer he settled at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva, Switzerland, with his personal physician, the young, brilliant, and handsome John William Polidori. There Byron befriended the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Shelley's future wife Mary Godwin. He was also joined by Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with whom he had had an affair in London.
12. Wolfen (Das Tier in Mir) - E Nomine
Lady Caroline's cousin Anne Isabella Milbanke was a highly moral woman, intelligent and mathematically gifted. The marriage proved unhappy. He treated her poorly.
13. The Beauty Underneath
He was extremely self-conscious about [his deformed foot] from a young age, nicknaming himself "le diable boiteux"
14. The Black Chamber - Black Guardian
15. Monster - Kanye West
"Even to have such a thing said is utter destruction and ruin to a man from which he can never recover."
16. Lucifer's Angel
Lord Byron obtained a reputation as being extravagant, melancholic, courageous, unconventional, eccentric, flamboyant and controversial. He was independent and given to extremes of temper; on at least one trip, his travelling companions were so puzzled by his mood swings they thought he was mentally ill
17. Miserere - Andrea Bocelli
"I am not sure that long life is desirable for one of my temper & constitutional depression of Spirits."
18. The Minstrel Boy - Bardic
Byron left Genoa on the Hercules, arriving at Kefalonia in the Ionian Islands on 4 August. He spent £4000 of his own money to refit the Greek fleet. Byron employed a fire-master to prepare artillery and took part of the rebel army under his own command, despite his lack of military experience
19. No More a-Roving - Leonard Cohen
His remains were sent to England for burial in Westminster Abbey, but the Abbey refused for reason of "questionable morality".
TVTropes describes the Byronic Hero....
While they can be good people, Byronic Heroes tend to be morally neutral and largely concerned with their immediate self-interest. However, they are often perceived as being lower on the morality scale owing to unpleasant characteristics such as conflicting emotions, poor integrity, the status of exile, a lack of respect for rank or privilege, a troubled past, cynicism, arrogance, and self-destructiveness. They also have a number of characteristics which are intended as controversial moral failings, at least at the time of writing. Values Dissonance may confuse the intent of some of these traits. Take a classical Byronic Hero(such as Lord Byron himself), who is a nonconformist with a dislike for social norms, introspective, struggles with his sexuality, and is importantly a loner prone to Melodrama. Now, think of this in a time before All Girls Want Bad Boys was mainstream, and you're getting at the real heart of the ideal. Also, they tend to be Jerkass Woobies.
A Byronic hero may have a vaguely suggested horrible crime behind him. This crime may never been made explicit; may indeed be so vague as to suggest that the hero is over-dramatizing himself.
And Wikipedia writes my liner notes...
1. Modern Don Juan - Buddy Holly
"He has no indisposition that I know of but love, desperate love, the worst of all maladies in my opinion."
2. (If You Were) In My Movie - Suzanne Vega
His nostalgic poems about his Harrow friendships express "consciousness of sexual differences that may in the end make England untenable to him"
3. Addicted to Bad Ideas- - The World / Inferno Friendship Society
Byron racked up numerous debts as a young man, due to what his mother termed a "reckless disregard for money"...
4. Big and Bad - Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
In his own words, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous"
5. My Life - Billy Joel
Byron went on the Grand Tour, then customary for a young nobleman. The Napoleonic Wars forced him to avoid most of Europe, and he instead turned to the Mediterranean. Correspondence among his circle of Cambridge friends also suggests that a key motive was the hope of homosexual experience, and other theories saying that he was worried about a possible dalliance with the married Mary Chatsworth.
6. In Taberna - Carl Orff
His wife Annabella coined the term "Byromania" to refer to the commotion surrounding him
7. Desire - U2
In 1812, Byron embarked on a well-publicised affair with the married Lady Caroline Lamb that shocked the British public. Byron eventually broke off the relationship and moved swiftly on to others, but Lamb never entirely recovered
8. Fire In Freetown - K'naan
As a child, Byron had seen little of his half-sister Augusta Leigh; in adulthood, he formed a close relationship with her that has been interpreted by some as incestuous, and by others as innocent. Augusta (who was married) gave birth on 15 April 1814 to her third daughter, Elizabeth Medora Leigh
10. We Both Go Down Together - The Decemberists
Cogni could not read or write, and she left her husband to move into Byron's Venice house. Their fighting often caused Byron to spend the night in his gondola; when he asked her to leave the house, she threw herself into the Venetian canal
11. Going Under - Evanescence
In the summer he settled at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva, Switzerland, with his personal physician, the young, brilliant, and handsome John William Polidori. There Byron befriended the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Shelley's future wife Mary Godwin. He was also joined by Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with whom he had had an affair in London.
12. Wolfen (Das Tier in Mir) - E Nomine
Lady Caroline's cousin Anne Isabella Milbanke was a highly moral woman, intelligent and mathematically gifted. The marriage proved unhappy. He treated her poorly.
13. The Beauty Underneath
He was extremely self-conscious about [his deformed foot] from a young age, nicknaming himself "le diable boiteux"
14. The Black Chamber - Black Guardian
15. Monster - Kanye West
"Even to have such a thing said is utter destruction and ruin to a man from which he can never recover."
16. Lucifer's Angel
Lord Byron obtained a reputation as being extravagant, melancholic, courageous, unconventional, eccentric, flamboyant and controversial. He was independent and given to extremes of temper; on at least one trip, his travelling companions were so puzzled by his mood swings they thought he was mentally ill
17. Miserere - Andrea Bocelli
"I am not sure that long life is desirable for one of my temper & constitutional depression of Spirits."
18. The Minstrel Boy - Bardic
Byron left Genoa on the Hercules, arriving at Kefalonia in the Ionian Islands on 4 August. He spent £4000 of his own money to refit the Greek fleet. Byron employed a fire-master to prepare artillery and took part of the rebel army under his own command, despite his lack of military experience
19. No More a-Roving - Leonard Cohen
His remains were sent to England for burial in Westminster Abbey, but the Abbey refused for reason of "questionable morality".