1. Don Juan has sometimes been called an epic. Look up some definitions of epic and decide whether Don Juan may properly be called an epic or not. 2. Read Tirso de Molina’s play The Rogue of Seville and write an essay comparing and contrasting de Molina’s play and Byron’s […]
Read more Study Help Essay QuestionsCritical Essays Style of the Poem
In general, the style of Don Juan is the easy conversational or epistolary style. Byron is talking to his readers and as he talks his subject reminds him of this or that, to which a few lines or stanzas will thereupon be devoted. Don Juan is deliberately discursive and digressive. […]
Read more Critical Essays Style of the PoemCritical Essays Plan of the Poem
Byron made contradictory statements about his purpose in writing Don Juan. He told his friend Thomas Moore in 1818 that the poem was meant “to be a little quietly facetious upon every thing,” and to his publisher John Murray he wrote that in Don Juan he intended only “to giggle […]
Read more Critical Essays Plan of the PoemCritical Essays The Ottava Rima Stanza and Style
Behind the character of Don Juan lay a long tradition going back to the Renaissance. Behind the stanza used in “Prospectus” and “Beppo” also lay a long tradition going back to the Renaissance. These two traditions are combined in Don Juan. Chief among the Italian Renaissance writers who had combined […]
Read more Critical Essays The Ottava Rima Stanza and StyleCritical Essays The Literary Background
The character of Don Juan was contributed to world literature by the Spanish writer Gabriel Tellez (1584-1648), whose pen name was Tirso de Molina, in his play El Burlador & Sevilla (The Rogue of Seville), which appeared in the early 1630s. The character of the unscrupulous seducer became a favorite […]
Read more Critical Essays The Literary BackgroundLord Byron Biography
George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron, was born in London on January 22, 1788, the only son of Captain John Byron and his second wife, the heiress Catherine Gordon. On the insistence of the Gordon family, John Byron legally changed his name to John Gordon. As a result, Lord Byron was […]
Read more Lord Byron BiographyCharacter Analysis Aurora Raby
Young beautiful, and noble, Aurora Raby is an outsider in the aristocratic society to which she belongs by birth. She is a Roman Catholic in a social class that is overwhelmingly Protestant. Unlike Juan, who is also a Roman Catholic, she is a believer who practices her faith Don Juan’s […]
Read more Character Analysis Aurora RabyCharacter Analysis Lady Adeline Amundeville
On the surface Lady Adeline seems to be a somewhat frigid young woman, but at heart she is deeply passionate. This frustration of her strong feelings is a source of potential danger for her marriage. She loves her husband but her love for him costs her an effort. She is […]
Read more Character Analysis Lady Adeline AmundevilleCharacter Analysis Lord Henry Amundeville
Lord Henry is a politician and man of the world. He courts the good opinion and the friendship of those who can help him. He is a member of the Privy Council and as such a capable and faithful servant of his country; at the same time he manages to […]
Read more Character Analysis Lord Henry AmundevilleCharacter Analysis Catherine the Great
In Don Juan the reader sees only a few aspects of the complex woman who was Catherine the Great. He sees her chiefly as sensualist and as an absolute sovereign who is extravagantly generous to her lovers. He does not see her as the woman who did much to Westernize […]
Read more Character Analysis Catherine the Great