In Lord Byron’s poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” the traveling central figure is called Childe Harold.
The poem follows Harold, a disillusioned young aristocrat who leaves his homeland and travels through Portugal, Spain, Albania, Greece, and other regions. His journeys provide a framework for reflections on history, politics, nature, freedom, and the ruins of past civilizations.
Byron published the first two cantos in 1812, and the work made him famous almost immediately. The third and fourth cantos appeared later, in 1816 and 1818. The poem is written in Spenserian stanzas, a form associated with Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene.”
“Childe” is a medieval term for a young nobleman who has not yet been knighted; it is not simply Harold’s first name. The poem’s narrator often resembles Byron himself, but Childe Harold is a literary persona, so the character and author should not be treated as identical.