The Prisoner of Chillon is a 392-line narrative poem

Narrative poetry

Narrative poetry is poetry that has a plot. The poems that make up this genre may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be simple or complex. It is usually nondramatic, with objective regular scheme and meter. Narrative poems include epics, ballads, idylls and lays.Some narrative...

 by Lord Byron. Written in 1816

1816 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* This year was known as the "Year Without a Summer" after Mount Tambora had erupted in the Dutch East Indies the previous year and cast enough ash in to the atmosphere to block out the sun and cause...

, it chronicles the imprisonment of a Genevois

Annecy

Annecy is a commune in the Haute-Savoie department in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France.It lies on the northern tip of Lake Annecy , 35 kilometres south of Geneva.-Administration:...

 monk, François Bonivard

François Bonivard

François Bonivard was a Swiss patriot and historian whose life was the inspiration for Byron's 1816 poem The Prisoner Of Chillon....

, from 1532 to 1536.

Writing and publication

On 22 June 1816 Lord Byron and his contemporary and friend Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...

 were sailing on Lake Geneva

Lake Geneva

Lake Geneva or Lake Léman is a lake in Switzerland and France. It is one of the largest lakes in Western Europe. 59.53 % of it comes under the jurisdiction of Switzerland , and 40.47 % under France...

 (referred to as "Lac Leman," the French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 name, throughout the poem) and stopped to visit the Château de Chillon. After touring the castle—and walking through the dungeon in which Bonivard was imprisoned—Byron was inspired by Bonivard's story and composed The Sonnet of Chillon.

Because of torrential rainfall, Byron and his companion rested at a hotel in Ouchy

Ouchy

Ouchy is a commune, port, and popular lakeside resort located south of the city of Lausanne in Switzerland at the edge of the Lake Léman ....

 following their tour. In late June or early July (several early drafts and copies present conflicting dates), Byron composed the longer fable. The work was probably completed by 2 July 1816. Following his return to England, The Prisoner of Chillion was first published as The Prisoner of Chillon and Other Poems by John Murray

John Murray (publisher)

John Murray is an English publisher, renowned for the authors it has published in its history, including Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Byron, Charles Lyell, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Herman Melville, and Charles Darwin...

 on 5 December 1816.

Structure

The work's themes and images follow those of a typical poem by Lord Byron: the protagonist is an isolated figure, and brings a strong will to bear against great sufferings. He seeks solace in the beauty of nature (especially in sections ten and thirteen), and is a martyr of sorts to the cause of liberty. Like much of Byron's work, it came about as a reaction to his own experiences as a traveller, making use of historical and geographical knowledge Byron gained in continental Europe.

Byron titled his work The Prisoner of Chillon / a fable; stylistically, it is a romantic verse-tale.

The first line "Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind" echoes the line "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" from Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

's Eloisa to Abelard

Eloisa to Abelard

Published in 1717, Eloisa to Abelard is a poem by Alexander Pope . It is an Ovidian heroic epistle inspired by the 12th-century story of Héloïse's illicit love for, and secret marriage to, her teacher Pierre Abélard, perhaps the most popular teacher and philosopher in Paris, and the brutal...

.

Concept

The poem describes the trials of a lone survivor of a family who has been martyred. The character's father was burnt at the stake, and out of six brothers, two fell at the battlefield while one was burnt to death. The remaining three were sent to the castle of Chillon as prisoners, out of which two more died due to pining away. In time only the narrator lived.