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  • 00:00

    Edward Cullen.

  • 00:01

    Han Solo.

  • 00:02

    Killmoklknger.

  • 00:03

    Lestat.

  • 00:04

    What do all these characters have in common besides being heartthrobs?

  • 00:08

    They share a common ancestor: the Byronic Hero.

  • 00:11

    Brooding, sensual, violent, intelligent, and single-minded, the Byronic hero has been a

  • 00:17

    staple in literature dating back to the 19th century, but the archetype is all over film,

  • 00:22

    TV and even video games.

  • 00:24

    I see you Cloud Strife, all sad and angsty with your giant sword.

  • 00:28

    But what does it mean to be a Byronic hero?

  • 00:32

    And who was the man that helped create this iconic archetype?

  • 00:35

    Let’s get into the myth, the man, and the literary legacy.

  • 00:44

    According to Professor Peter L. Thorslev, author of The Byronic Hero: Types and Prototypes,

  • 00:48

    and Romantic Contraries,

  • 00:50

    “The characteristic Byronic hero. . .has borrowed characteristics from the Gothic Villain,

  • 00:55

    in his looks, his mysterious past, and his secret sins; and[...] from the Man of Feeling

  • 01:01

    in his tender sensibilities and in his undying fidelity to the woman he loves—but he is

  • 01:08

    more than these: he is also a Romantic rebel.[...] he chooses his values in open defiance of

  • 01:14

    the codes of society”

  • 01:16

    That’s right you defy the codes of society by being … sad and hot, with your slightly

  • 01:22

    stalker-like tendencies.

  • 01:26

    The Byronic Hero allowed for more complicated male characters to form and without him we

  • 01:30

    miss out on the development of the anti-hero.

  • 01:33

    But where did the Byronic hero even come from?

  • 01:36

    A very, very bad boy named George Gordon Byron aka Lord Byron.

  • 01:42

    Born to an absent father and a mercurial mother, Byron had a brilliant mind, but was tormented

  • 01:49

    due to being born with misshapen foot.

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    He came into wealth while young, but was surrounded by such a malevolent cast of characters in

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    his home life, he makes The Dursleys look loving and supportive.

  • 02:01

    Because of his slightly warped foot, Byron exercised excessively to make up for what

  • 02:08

    he saw as a flaw.

  • 02:09

    The other thing he was excessive about, was his love of the ladies (and the gents).

  • 02:15

    Enter: Lady Caroline Lamb, England, 1812.

  • 02:21

    Caroline Lamb, wife of future Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, had a very messy love affair

  • 02:27

    with Byron that had several public dramatic moments, including her breaking a wine glass

  • 02:33

    and trying to harm herself.

  • 02:36

    She notoriously called Byron: “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”

  • 02:41

    Definite a gemini, TMZ would have lived for it.

  • 02:46

    The real kicker came when Lamb wrote her gothic revenge novel Glenarvon, which frames Byron

  • 02:51

    as a vampiric figure who, through his incredible magnetism, attracts women only to suck out

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    their strength by stealing their hearts, and taking their innocence.

  • 03:04

    Glenarvon was basically a tell-all book under the guise of fiction with very clear allusions

  • 03:09

    to real people, allusions that were so obvious that it ended Lamb’s standing in society

  • 03:15

    …. forever.

  • 03:16

    But the public loved it and the main villain that Byron inspired, Clarence de Ruthven aka

  • 03:22

    Lord Glenarvon, was … deliciously messy.

  • 03:25

    It was from this story that we got the first, non-Byron created, Byronic “hero.”

  • 03:32

    And lo, the Byronic floodgates opened.

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    Gothic and romantic fiction of the 19th and early 20th century ate this up.

  • 03:40

    The Brontes, Dumas, Hugo, Leroux, hell even Ian Fleming’s James Bond is pretty Byronic.

  • 03:48

    So why is this version of a romantic hero so popular?

  • 03:52

    There are many kinds of Byronic Heroes, but for the sake of everyone we are going to split

  • 03:57

    them into two groups: the Gothic and the Romantic.

  • 04:01

    Gothic novels which often blend together horror and romance feature dark hopeless figures

  • 04:08

    tormented by a wrong done to them that makes up their entire existence.

  • 04:13

    They can sometimes be villains, but are often anti-heroes possessing some sort of complex

  • 04:20

    emotional backstory meant to be sympathetic.

  • 04:23

    Some famous examples are Victor Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster (Frankenstein),

  • 04:28

    Captain Ahab (Moby Dick), Erik (Phantom of the Opera), and Edmond Dantès (The Count

  • 04:34

    of Monte Cristo)...and Megamind!

  • 04:42

    In Romance literature (ie Romance literature of the 19th century as opposed to the romance

  • 04:48

    genre we know today) the hero is a solitary figure who seeks to live out their life in

  • 04:53

    isolation, but is pulled into society against their will.

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    They have a mixture of monstrous appearances, yet alluring personalities.

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    They will yell at you once, and then stare longing into your eyes afterwards.

  • 05:10

    ... It’s kind of a red flag if you think about it.

  • 05:13

    Popular versions of this are Rochester from Jane Eyre, Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights,

  • 05:19

    and ... pretty much any vampire in fiction who was ever sad about being a vampire.

  • 05:24

    They love to brood!

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    In the sad boy vs vengeance boy venn diagram what connects them is the grey morality that

  • 05:33

    makes you as the reader empathize with their situation.

  • 05:37

    The Creature from Frankenstein is reacting to the cruel world that created him and Victor,

  • 05:43

    while reckless, was genuinely frightened by what he had done and didn’t deserve to have

  • 05:50

    his whole family slaughtered.

  • 05:51

    Edmound Dantèes’ desire for revenge after spending fourteen years in a French prison

  • 05:56

    after being framed for a crime he didn’t commit is very understandable.

  • 06:02

    However, does it actually justify the innocent lives lost in the crossfire of said revenge

  • 06:08

    quest?

  • 06:09

    Judge Claude Frollo from Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel Hunchback is a good man who loves his

  • 06:16

    adoptive son and younger brother, but is gripped with lust for a woman he can not have and

  • 06:25

    it tips him into madness quicker than you can say “I’m losing to a bird.”

  • 06:32

    Heathcliff is such a compelling romantic lead because the text makes it clear he was forced

  • 06:37

    into becoming a bitter hateful man, but his young toxic love for Catherine and his lack

  • 06:45

    of redemption make him oddly sympathetic.

  • 06:49

    Rochester has this deep love for Jane and treats his servants kindly, but locks his

  • 06:57

    mentally ill wife in an attic and shames her for being sick.

  • 07:01

    Byron, he had this huge capacity for love, intelligence, and understood

  • 07:06

    the great beauty in the world.

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    But, also chaotic and emotionally aloof.

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    He was the baddest bad boy and the appeal of that character is

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    that misguided hope that one day you will be the one.

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    That you might ~ change him.

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    ~

  • 07:26

    As literary genre critic, Conrad Aquilina eloquently put it: “The Byronic hero bears

  • 07:30

    the dual markings of both villain and victim.

  • 07:33

    He is a fallen creature in his own right; a dark angel bringing both love and death,

  • 07:38

    yearning for redemption and ultimately finding none.”

  • 07:42

    Erik, the eponymous phantom from Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera is a talented man whose

  • 07:48

    lifetime of pain has forced him to resort to extreme means in order to be loved by someone.

  • 07:56

    Like building a torture chamber right to his guest bedroom.

  • 08:03

    In EM Hull’s 1919 novel The Sheik - not only is our hero abusive and tortured (which

  • 08:08

    I am putting mildly) he breaks his victim so hard she totally falls in love with him

  • 08:14

    by the end.

  • 08:15

    But don’t worry, he feels bad about it eventually.

  • 08:19

    This novel, though incredibly ~problematic~ created a paradigm shift for the Byronic hero

  • 08:26

    and romance in general - before this, if a woman is “defiled”, she can only regain

  • 08:30

    her purity through death, but this time she… gets a happy ending?

  • 08:36

    With the guy who kidnapped her?

  • 08:39

    Winning?

  • 08:40

    Though not as hot of a commodity in the mid-20th century, the late 20th century saw a huge

  • 08:47

    resurgence in the popularity of the Byronic hero - there was the emergence of the bodice

  • 08:52

    ripper subgenre of romance novels like 1972’s The Flame and the Flower, which is considered

  • 08:58

    the first “bodice ripper” romance and revolutionized the modern romance genre, and

  • 09:03

    it has a dynamic between its two romantic leads that is… very influenced by the Sheik.

  • 09:09

    And then there’s more recent characters like Twilight’s Edward Cullen, and his spiritual

  • 09:14

    descendant Christian Grey (ugh).

  • 09:17

    Yeah, I know, but he’s a really popular example so we have to talk about him.

  • 09:23

    Grey has severe childhood emotional and sexual trauma that keeps him from being able to form

  • 09:29

    healthy sexual or romantic relationships with women he respects.

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    Or … able to respect women period.

  • 09:38

    But don’t worry, here comes bright-eyed virgin Anastasia Steele, whom he gaslights,

  • 09:45

    abuses and makes her cry a lot.

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    She wants to change him and by the end of the thousand-plus agonizing pages, she succeeds,

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    and he’s healed now, hooray.

  • 10:00

    These characters are all different from the more traditional, upbeat capital R - romantic

  • 10:05

    hero in that they are primarily shaped and motivated by their traumas, past and present.

  • 10:12

    One might note that overwhelmingly these characters are male and white.

  • 10:16

    But more recently we see more female characters who possess some Byronic qualities: Faith

  • 10:21

    from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Regina from Once Upon a Time, Olivia Pope from Scandal,

  • 10:27

    Catra from She-Ra, but those characters are punished a lot more by both audiences and

  • 10:34

    writers for their nature.

  • 10:35

    It tends not to be framed with the same seductive quality.

  • 10:42

    The alluring aspect of female and non-white Byronic characters is seeing them have the

  • 10:46

    freedom to be more complex than just idealized one-note types of representation.

  • 10:51

    Atara Stein argues that Catherine Earnshaw from Wuthering Heights and Eustacia Vye from

  • 10:56

    The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy are Byronic heroes because of their “rebellion

  • 11:01

    against a conventional society that stifles individuality” and that “these Byronic

  • 11:07

    heroines take on the characteristics of the rebellious, ambitious, narcissistic, individualistic,

  • 11:14

    and ultimately self-destructive Byronic male.”

  • 11:18

    However both these female characters are killed off and those who are not, end up finding

  • 11:22

    their way back to “traditional female values.”

  • 11:28

    This reflects the reality for a lot of women in history who were both brilliant, but were

  • 11:33

    also loud, and may have suffered from mental illness and didn’t conduct themselves as

  • 11:42

    “ladies”

  • 11:43

    A major difference between the male and female variants, at least in the 19th century, is

  • 11:48

    that these female characters are not allowed to be romanticized in the same way men are.

  • 11:54

    Byronic heroes are unlikeable on purpose, but there will always be a privilege of being

  • 12:00

    white, male, and rich that allowed these characters to be so awful and get away with it.

  • 12:04

    Do you think Rochester would be able to get away with having a wife in his attic for the

  • 12:10

    lulz if he wasn’t a white dude?

  • 12:13

    Byron died at 36 years old from an illness exacerbated by the then-common medical practice

  • 12:17

    of bloodletting.

  • 12:18

    I'll let you google that.

  • 12:20

    His tragic death at a young age made him a hero.

  • 12:23

    The world mourned him in the same way people mourned Hendrix, Cobain, Winehouse, the sudden

  • 12:29

    death of a great artistic genius who burned so hotly and wildly that it was no shock at

  • 12:36

    all he burned out so young.

  • 12:38

    But in a delightful touch of irony one of the greatest legacies of Byron’s life was

  • 12:42

    his daughter Ada Lovelace, called one of the first computer programmers and some might

  • 12:48

    say even more of a genius than her own father.

  • 12:54

    And according to British literature Professor Andrew Elfenbein, “Byron is

  • 12:59

    not just an author, but an unprecedented cultural phenomenon.

  • 13:04

    His work affects not only the novel, poetry, and drama, but fashion, social manners, erotic

  • 13:10

    experience, and gender roles.”

  • 13:12

    The Byronic Hero has much in common with the broader concept of the anti-hero: tormented

  • 13:17

    by forces beyond their control, with a sharp wit that they have developed in order to cope

  • 13:22

    with whatever monstrous thing is innate to them, be it vampirism, childhood trauma or

  • 13:26

    a weird foot.

  • 13:27

    Now this damage doesn’t make them good.

  • 13:28

    There is no good reason to emotionally manipulate people or to lock your sick wife in the attic,

  • 13:43

    but the cruel circumstances of fate make them tragic.

  • 13:46

    Especially when the story makes it clear that otherwise they might have actually been someone

  • 13:51

    capable of true emotional growth.

  • 13:53

    Leroux even ends his The Phantom of the Opera thusly - “With an ordinary face, he would

  • 13:58

    have been one of the noblest members of the human race.

  • 14:02

    He had a heart great enough to hold the empire of the world, and in the end he had to be

  • 14:07

    content with a cellar.”

  • 14:08

    All of the tortured romantic bad boys of literature, film, and television have a little bit of

  • 14:14

    Byron in them.

  • 14:15

    So next time you get deep in your feelings for Kylo Ren or cheer on the redemption of

  • 14:21

    Prince Zuko or secretly pop on Twilight for the 200th time, pour one out for Lord Byron,

  • 14:27

    to whom we owe so much.

  • 14:30

    Yet we still formed an entire romantic based around who he was, flaws and all.

All

The example sentences of HUNCHBACK in videos (15 in total of 24)

so preposition or subordinating conjunction the determiner only adverb place noun, singular or mass in preposition or subordinating conjunction the determiner embryo noun, singular or mass where wh-adverb you personal pronoun have verb, non-3rd person singular present unfettered verb, past participle bicoid proper noun, singular and coordinating conjunction hunchback proper noun, singular activators noun, plural
judge proper noun, singular claude proper noun, singular frollo proper noun, singular from preposition or subordinating conjunction victor proper noun, singular hugo proper noun, singular s proper noun, singular 1831 cardinal number novel noun, singular or mass hunchback proper noun, singular is verb, 3rd person singular present a determiner good adjective man noun, singular or mass who wh-pronoun loves verb, 3rd person singular present his possessive pronoun
you personal pronoun got verb, past tense your possessive pronoun hunchback noun, singular or mass of preposition or subordinating conjunction notre proper noun, singular dame proper noun, singular , and coordinating conjunction you personal pronoun also adverb got verb, past tense your possessive pronoun quarterback noun, singular or mass and coordinating conjunction halfback noun, singular or mass
the determiner cathedral adjective is verb, 3rd person singular present widely adverb known verb, past participle for preposition or subordinating conjunction the determiner story noun, singular or mass of preposition or subordinating conjunction hunchback proper noun, singular of preposition or subordinating conjunction notre proper noun, singular dame proper noun, singular by preposition or subordinating conjunction victor proper noun, singular hugo proper noun, singular .
the determiner hunchback noun, singular or mass who wh-pronoun has verb, 3rd person singular present lived verb, past participle inside preposition or subordinating conjunction notre proper noun, singular dame proper noun, singular cathedral adjective in preposition or subordinating conjunction paris proper noun, singular since preposition or subordinating conjunction he personal pronoun was verb, past tense a determiner baby noun, singular or mass .
the determiner next adjective day noun, singular or mass tara proper noun, singular , willow proper noun, singular , and coordinating conjunction buffy proper noun, singular are verb, non-3rd person singular present having verb, gerund or present participle a determiner chat noun, singular or mass about preposition or subordinating conjunction the determiner hunchback proper noun, singular of preposition or subordinating conjunction notre proper noun, singular dame proper noun, singular .
stage proper noun, singular 5 cardinal number was verb, past tense especially adverb perplexing verb, gerund or present participle , with preposition or subordinating conjunction both determiner a determiner skeleton noun, singular or mass and coordinating conjunction a determiner hunchback noun, singular or mass dropping verb, gerund or present participle a determiner watch noun, singular or mass ,
hey interjection what wh-pronoun do verb, non-3rd person singular present you personal pronoun think verb, non-3rd person singular present do verb, non-3rd person singular present you personal pronoun have verb, non-3rd person singular present any determiner dark adjective theories noun, plural about preposition or subordinating conjunction the determiner hunchback proper noun, singular of preposition or subordinating conjunction
i personal pronoun remember verb, non-3rd person singular present much adverb more adverb, comparative great adjective and coordinating conjunction disturbing adjective imagery noun, singular or mass from preposition or subordinating conjunction " hunchback proper noun, singular of preposition or subordinating conjunction notre proper noun, singular dame proper noun, singular " or coordinating conjunction " snow proper noun, singular white proper noun, singular "
same proper noun, singular with preposition or subordinating conjunction hunchback proper noun, singular of preposition or subordinating conjunction notre proper noun, singular dame proper noun, singular , only adverb here adverb the determiner villain noun, singular or mass has verb, 3rd person singular present a determiner sliiightly proper noun, singular more adjective, comparative dimension noun, singular or mass . . . slightly adverb .
hunchback noun, singular or mass phantom noun, singular or mass of preposition or subordinating conjunction the determiner opera noun, singular or mass mask noun, singular or mass wearing verb, gerund or present participle brick noun, singular or mass oven noun, singular or mass pizza noun, singular or mass operator noun, singular or mass at preposition or subordinating conjunction the determiner pizza noun, singular or mass pit noun, singular or mass
belle foreign word makes verb, 3rd person singular present a determiner cameo noun, singular or mass in preposition or subordinating conjunction the determiner film noun, singular or mass the determiner hunchback proper noun, singular of preposition or subordinating conjunction notre proper noun, singular dame proper noun, singular , another determiner disney proper noun, singular film noun, singular or mass set verb, past participle in preposition or subordinating conjunction
the determiner hunchback proper noun, singular of preposition or subordinating conjunction notre proper noun, singular dame proper noun, singular has verb, 3rd person singular present a determiner boulanger proper noun, singular or coordinating conjunction otherwise adverb known verb, past participle as preposition or subordinating conjunction baker proper noun, singular in preposition or subordinating conjunction english proper noun, singular , while preposition or subordinating conjunction
notably adverb , he personal pronoun played verb, past tense the determiner lead noun, singular or mass in preposition or subordinating conjunction the determiner 20 cardinal number s proper noun, singular adaptations noun, plural of preposition or subordinating conjunction the determiner hunchback proper noun, singular of preposition or subordinating conjunction notre proper noun, singular dame proper noun, singular
they personal pronoun 're verb, non-3rd person singular present all determiner beautiful adjective seductresses noun, plural or coordinating conjunction hunky proper noun, singular bad adjective boys noun, plural with preposition or subordinating conjunction nary adjective a determiner claw noun, singular or mass - fingered verb, past tense hunchback noun, singular or mass in preposition or subordinating conjunction sight noun, singular or mass .

Use "hunchback" in a sentence | "hunchback" example sentences

How to use "hunchback" in a sentence?

  • The Saints come, as human as a mouth, with a bag of God in their backs, like a hunchback, they come, they come marching in.
    -Anne Sexton-
  • All of us, no matter how we look born into this world, feel something like the Hunchback. It doesn't matter if you have a beautiful face or not.
    -Ray Bradbury-
  • If Jesus had been a hunchback, they could hardly have nailed him to the cross.
    -Gunter Grass-
  • I don't know what my appeal is. I can see I've got blue eyes and don't look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame but I can't understand the fuss.
    -Rutger Hauer-

Definition and meaning of HUNCHBACK

What does "hunchback mean?"

/ˈhən(t)SHbak/

noun
Person with a hump or big lump on their back.