Byronize

present singular third person Byronizes · participle present Byronizing · participle past Byronized · past Byronized

1. To make something, or someone, more Byronic

   Seeing as Conrad sees, the Critical Review neatly Byronizes: “A figure approaches — it is Gulnare. A spot of blood is all eloquence. The deed is done” (RR B:2:634). The first impulse of signification is to imagine the[…]

   1993, Jerome Christensen, Lord Byron's Strength: Romantic Writing and Commercial Society, JHU Press, →ISBN, page 124

   2 more examples

   (17–20) No longer trying to Byronize her heroines only to discover that female commitments alienate them from the romance of Byronic alienation, Hemans makes Byron accountable to her values. Recasting Childe Harold is a recurring[…]

   2016 February 2, N. Sweet, J. Melnyk, Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century, Springer, →ISBN, page 172

   What makes it so painful to predict his future candidly is the fact that this Russian Byronizing tradition has an undercurrent of unconscious self-destructiveness, constantly oscillating between would-be folk hero and would-be martyr,[…]

   2017 September 8, Peter Viereck, Strict Wildness: Discoveries in Poetry and History, Routledge, →ISBN

2. To look at the world as if one were a Byronic character

   My dear, I remember men who Byronized themselves to death. I have seen much; I have seen men who, for example, took a fancy to peasants, and ended with drinking vodka in peasant dramshops. There is no measure with us, and there cannot[…]

   2019 June 3, Henryk Sienkiewicz, The Greatest Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz: Quo Vadis, In Desert and Wilderness, With Fire and Sword, The Deluge, Pan Michael, Children of the Soil, On the Field of Glory, Whirlpools, Without Dogma, In Vain, e-artnow