Defiance In Byron's 'Manfred'

The scene in Byron 's “Manfred” in which the spirit of Astarte, the protagonist 's dead love, rises from the mist is one of the drama 's focal points and features classic tropes associated with Romantic literature. The themes present in the scene focus on defiance of authority, the nature of law and the capacity for a human individual to transcend the limitations of mortality. Crucially, the scene places Manfred at the centre of an antagonism between his own desire for redemption and his refusal to accept the limits of his life. It is this antagonism which fuels the scene, along with Manfred 's refusal to bow to a finite authority. As such, in order to understand the complexity of the scene it is necessary to view both its poetic structures

When the former enters the scene he is explicitly positioned as mortal by the spirits that surround Arimanes, and this mortality is described in explicit images of matter and of corruptibility. The spirits demand that Manfred “porstrate” himself and his “condemned clay” (2012,642). The use of alliteration in this latter case draws attention to the natural limitations within which Manfred lives as a mortal, and as someone destined to die and be buried. The Romantic content of the scene is revealed in Manfred 's defiance of the command to bow to Arimanes, and this defiance is predicated on the fact that the latter is equally dependent upon mortality. Manfred insists that his opponent is not capable of grasping the totality of the universe, and states: “Bid him [Arimanes] bow down to that which is above him, / The overruling Infinite, the Maker / who made him not for worship...” (655). Arimanes is not an infinite, as he remains bound to the praise of his subjects, rather Manfred manifests defiance by suggesting that he is capable of understanding a power above his brute force; one which is not bound to its creations, or that has not made them simply for the sake of “worship.” By insisting that Arimanes is bound to the same limitations as himself, Manfred simultaneously identifies a limit on his power, and suggests that there is a force beyond this limit. As such, his defiance is predicated on the fact

They notes that Manfred 's sufferings have “been of an immortal nature, like / Our own; his knowledge and his powers and will / As far as is compatible with clay, /...have bee such / As clay has seldom borne” (658). Manfred in this image is depicted as an individual who rages against the reality of his own mortal limitations, despite the evident fact that he can never overcome. It is this refusal to resign to one 's limitations at the same moment that one remains bound to them, that marks Manfred as an archetypal Byronic, Romantic hero,, contradistinction to Arimanes who remains unconscious of the fact that his power is compromized. The climax of the scene manifests Byron 's belief that a higher mode of power may be accessed through earthly love, another common theme in Romantic literature. By calling on the spirit of Astarte and asking for forgiveness alongside asking her to tell him that she loves him, Manfred makes it clear that his own desire is bound to the physical world, but that this very physical world, when approached from the perspective of a Romantic view of love, is capable of generating a sense of the infinite that is unbound to the laws of destruction and