Lord Byron's "The Giaour"

Study Guide Sample

“The Giaour (commonly misspelled “Giaur”) by Lord George Noel Gordon Byron is an extended epic poem, featuring one of the first English renditions of the vampire in verse. This Study Guide is the real-meal deal, extending well beyond the two vampire stanzas and embracing the poem as a whole. This Guide covers all forty-seven stanzas in impressive detail.

Sample of Study Guide: First Two Stanzas

ORIGINAL: Byron: The Giaour A Fragment of a Turkish Tale

No breath of air to break the wave
That rolls below the Athenian's grave,
That tomb which, gleaming o'er the cliff
First greets the homeward-veering skiff
High o'er the land he saved in vain;
When shall such Hero live again?

We begin in Stanza One in a prose section, where Bryon introduces this as a fragment, enabling it to be told from several viewpoints: that of an unnamed narrator, that of the Giaour himself, and that of a priest in the monastery to which the Giaour banishes himself. In stanza one he tells us that this is the story of a female slave who took a Christian (infidel) lover, enraging her owner/lover to the extent that he had her thrown into the sea (again, not explicit in the poem itself). Her death was avenged by her lover. We then are treated to a bunch of foreign names of places, and people, including a brief history of the political changes in the area of this poem. We are told that many of the foreign rulers were crueler than “anything else in Muslim history.”

Stanza Two laments the lack of an Athenian Hero, whose grave is standing upon the “gleaming cliff.” This grave is the first thing seen when returning to land. The narrator goes on to ask if another such hero will ever live again.

Lines have been broken down based upon punctuation, since that kept the thoughts together more coherently than a strict line-by-line breakdown would have done.

Stanza One

This part is in prose, and directly addresses the reader. Byron tells us that the tale (story) he is about to tell us is broken, fragmentary. Then he tells us that the story at one time was complete. This lends an aura of antiquity to the story he is telling us. (And with antiquity, comes authoritativeness).

The story is about the adventures of a female slave who had a lover. As was the Muslim custom at that time, she was thrown into the sea by her master. Her death was avenged by her lover, a Venetian. At this time the seven Islands were ruled by the Republic of Venice, and the action occurred soon after the Arnauts were beaten back from the Morea , which they had ravaged for some time after the Russian invasion. The desertion of the Mainotes after being refused the plunder of Misitra, led to the abandonment of the enterprise, and to the desolation of the Morea. The cruelty perpetrated by all participants was extreme, exceeding anything else in Muslim recorded history.

Stanza Two Lines 1 – 6

(1 – 5) The waves are still and calm under the cliff, where the tomb of the Athenian who saved his own land sits in vain. This grave is the first thing seen by returning fishermen.

(6) “When shall such a Hero live again?”• Note that the first line, “No breath of air to break the wave” is juxtaposed against the next line with its rolling waves. How does the “No breath of air” relate to the dead hero and his current role? (Dead things do not affect nature.)

Footnotes