Don Juan (poem)

Satiric poem by Lord Byron

In English literature, Don Juan, written from 1819 to 1824 by the English poet Lord Byron, is a satirical, epic poem that portrays the Spanish folk legend of Don Juan, not as a womaniser as historically portrayed, but as a victim easily seduced by women. As genre literature, Don Juan is an epic poem, written in ottava rima and presented in 16 cantos. Lord Byron derived the character of Don Juan from traditional Spanish folk legends; however, the story was very much his own. Upon publication in 1819, cantos I and II were widely criticized as immoral because Byron had so freely ridiculed the social subjects and public figures of his time. At his death in 1824, Lord Byron had completed 16 of 17 cantos, whilst canto XVII remained unfinished.

Don Juan begins with the birth of the hero, Don Juan, in Seville, Spain. As a sexually precocious adolescent boy, Juan has a love affair with a married friend of his mother. When the woman's husband discovers her affair with the boy, Don Juan is sent to the distant city of Cádiz. On the way, he is shipwrecked on an island in the Aegean Sea, and there meets the daughter of the pirate whose men later sell Don Juan into Turkish slavery. At the slave market of Constantinople, the sultana sees Don Juan up for sale, and orders him bought and then disguised as a girl, in order to sneak him into her chambers. Consequent to arousing the jealousy of the sultana, Don Juan barely escapes alive from the harem. He then soldiers in the Imperial Russian army, rescues a Muslim girl, and attracts the favour of Empress Catherine the Great, who adds him to the royal court. In the course of Russian life, Don Juan falls ill because of the climate, and Catherine returns him to England, as a Russian courtier. In London, the diplomat Don Juan finds a guardian for the Muslim girl. The narrative then relates Don Juan's ensuing adventures with the British aristocracy.

In Spain. Don Juan lives in Seville with his father, Don José, and his mother, Donna Inez. The romantic Donna Julia, the twenty three year old wife of Don Alfonso, fancies and lusts for the sixteen year old boy Don Juan. Despite attempting to resist his charms, Julia enters into a love affair with Juan, and falls in love. Suspecting his wife's infidelity, Don Alfonso bursts into their bedroom, followed by his bodyguards who find no one and nothing suspicious upon searching their master's bedroom, for Juan was hiding in the bed; Don Alfonso and his posse leave the room. Later returning alone to his bedroom, Don Alfonso comes across Juan's shoes and they fight for the woman, Donna Julia. Breaking off the fight with Don Alfonso, Don Juan escapes. To thwart rumours and the consequent bad reputation that her son has brought upon himself, Donna Inez sends Don Juan away to travel Europe, in hope that he develop a better sense of morality. The cuckold Don Alfonso punishes his faithless wife, Donna Julia, by interning her to a nunnery.

Exiled from Seville. Don Juan travels to Cádiz, accompanied by Pedrillo, a tutor, and servants. Throughout the voyage, Juan pines for the love of Donna Julia, but seasickness distracts him. A storm wrecks the ship; Juan, his entourage, and some sailors escape in a long boat. Adrift in the Aegean Sea, they soon exhaust their supplies of food and eat Don Juan's dog. Afterwards, the sailors turn cannibal and eat Pedrillo; later, the cannibal sailors go mad and die. This Canto is largely based on accounts by survivors of the wreck of the Wager, including Byron’s grandfather, Admiral John Byron, who as a young man had endured the wreck of H. M. S. Wager off the coast of Chile. Juan is the sole survivor of the shipwreck and the escape in the long boat. Upon landfall at one of the Cyclades islands, two women, Haidée and Zoe, the latter being the maid of the former, discover the shipwrecked Juan and care for him in a cave at the beach. Haidée and Juan fall in love, despite neither speaking or understanding the language of the other. Moreover, Haidée's father, Lambro, is a pirate and a slaver who dislikes Don Juan, and has him enslaved and sent to Constantinople, in the Ottoman Empire.

A digression. To give his political opinions about the Ottoman Empire's hegemony upon Greece, in "The Isles of Greece" section of canto III, Byron uses numeration and versification different from the style of verse and enumeration of the text about Don Juan. Moreover, on returning to the adventures of Don Juan, the narrator vividly describes a catalogue of the celebrations of the lovers Haidée and Don Juan. At the time of Juan's ship wrecked arrival to the island, the islanders believed that Lambro (Haidée's father) was dead, but he returns and witnesses the revels and his daughter in company of a man. Towards the end of canto III, Byron again digresses from the adventures of Don Juan in order to insult his literary rivals, the Lake Poets, specifically William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Robert Southey (1774–1843), and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834).

Sold into slavery. On the island, the lovers Haidée and Don Juan wake to discover that her father, Lambro, has returned. Aided by his fellow pirates, Lambro enslaves Juan, and embarks him aboard a pirate ship delivering slaves to the slave market in Constantinople. Haidée despairs at losing her lover, and eventually dies of a broken heart, whilst pregnant with Don Juan's child.