Fierce Loves and Faithless Wars: Bruce, Byron and the Man of Feeling

Abstract

Lord Byron’s epic poems, and more pointedly his parliamentary record as exhibited by his speeches, express a rare communion with the plight of the working man and a singular opposition to unjust war. These sentiments, hilariously and cuttingly explored in Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, set him apart from the archetypal, systemically controlled male of his time. His work shares intriguing connections with the songs and expostulations of Bruce Springsteen, whose musical efforts against the Vietnam war, including Born in the USA and Your Hometown, are marked by outright tragedy and winking irony as well as the kind of subversive rhetorical melodies found in Byron’s work.

Additionally, Springsteen’s vast library of songs espousing the real, abstract and enduring challenges of working-class Americans (particularly men) parallels Byron’s open parliamentary support for the society of Luddites. Drawing from Ildiko Csengei’s essay The Fever of Vain Longing, which posits that Canto III of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage sees the transformation of the Byronic Hero into The Man of Feeling, I argue that while the unstirred Byronic Hero often stands in opulent contrast to the socially isolated, margin dwelling male trope that peppers Springsteen’s songs, this transformation aligns the two poets’ transgressive archetypes.