Literary B Don JuanBy Lord ByronPoem Summary Canto I Don Juan was born in Seville, Spain, the son of Don José, a member of the nobility, and Donna Inez, a woman of considerable learning. Juans parents did not get along well with each other because Don José was interested in women rather than in knowledge and was unfaithful to Donna Inez. Donna Inez was on the point of suing her husband for divorce when he died of a fever. The education of Juan became the primary interest of his mother. She saw to it that he received a thorough training in the arts and sciences but took great care that he should learn nothing about the basic facts of life. Among Donna Inezs friends is Donna Julia, the young and beautiful wife of Don Alfonso, a middle-aged man incapable of engaging her affections. When Juan is sixteen, Donna Julia falls in love with the handsome young man and finds opportunities to be in his company. One midsummer evening the two declare their love for each other. In November of that year Don Alfonso comes one night to the bedroom of his wife accompanied by a crowd of his friends. When he enters the room, his wife and her maid are ready for him; the bedclothes have been piled up in a heap on the bed. Don Alfonso and his followers search Donna Julias suite for a lover but find none. While searching, Don Alfonso becomes the target of a tirade of abuse from his wife. The whole company leaves, crestfallen. Don Alfsonso soon returns to apologize and happens to find a pair of mens shoes in his wifes bedroom. He leaves the room to get his sword. Don Juan, who has been hidden under the heap of bedclothes, prepares to make his escape by a back exit and runs into Don Alfsonso. In the fight that ensues, Juan strikes Alfonso on the nose and makes his escape. The sequel to these events is that Donna Julia is sent to a convent and Don Alfonso sues for divorce. Donna Inez decides that her son should spend the next four years traveling. Analysis The Dedication, written in 1818, was withheld from publication, on the insistence of John Murray, Byrons publisher, until after Byrons death. Byron kept up a running quarrel with the poet laureate, Robert Southey, for years, for poetical, political, and personal reasons, and finally demolished him in his superb The Vision of Judgment. The savage attack on Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, Foreign Secretary in the reactionary Tory government from 1812 to his suicide in 1822, was motivated by Byrons political liberalism, which tended to be extremist. Castlereagh, an able cabinet minister who did much to make possible Wellingtons victory over Napoleon and to save England from defeat, was an unselfish patriot but no sympathizer with self- rule or democracy.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 14:47:36 +0000
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