COMPARISONS BETWEEN UGO FOSCOLO AND GEORGE BYRON

Ugo Foscolo and George Gordon Byron were two poets of the beginning of the 19 th
century and they had two different poetic dictions because of their origins. Byron was
born in England and he could be considered a romantic poet; on the other hand,
Foscolo was born in Italy and he was considered a preromantic poet because in Italy
the romantic movement developed more late than in England. There were many
differences and similarities between these two poets about their works and so their
styles. Ugo Foscolo was exiled like Lord Byron and before the exile both had a great
restlessness. Both of them liked to travel, in fact Byron went to Venice, where he
produced the fourth and last canto of Childe Harold, with his Grand Tour, and Foscolo
moved to London in the last eleven years of his life. Then there was a similarity
between the two protagonists of their works, in which both Child Harold of Byron and
Jacopo Ortis of Foscolo were autobiographical characters. Another important
similarity between these poets was that both the authors had created these
characters through their own personal experience.