Byronic hero

Cultural  

1. A kind of hero found in several of the works of Lord Byron. Like Byron himself, a Byronic hero is a melancholy and rebellious young man, distressed by a terrible wrong he committed in the past.

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Example Sentences

Mena’s nimbleness was a large part of what gave the overture to Schumann’s 1848 “Manfred” the humanity required to hear the composer’s heart in the chest of the Byronic hero.

From Washington Post

The Byronic hero: temperamental, hedonistic and romantic.

From New York Times

After all, when Con first appears, dressed in dusty shades of purple like a retired royal, we already know he’s our Byronic hero.

From New York Times

Yes, the film argues that racist thinking warps your life and will ruin it, but it also presents Norton’s Derek Vinyard as a kind of Byronic hero.

From Slate

As writer Rebecca Traister pointed out on Twitter, a woman who abandoned her family for "self-discovery tours" would be regarded as a selfish monster, not a Byronic hero.

From Salon