- 501 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Don Juan
Lord Byron, My Old Classics, My Old Classics
About This Book
Don Juan by Lord Byron - by Lord Byron, is a satirical, epic poem that portrays Don Juan not as a womaniser, but as a man easily seduced by women. As genre literature, Don Juan is an epic poem, written in ottava rima and presented in sixteen cantos. Lord Byron derived the character, but not the story, from the Spanish legend of Don Juan. Upon initial publication in 1819, cantos I and II were criticised as immoral, because the author Byron too freely ridiculed the social subjects, the persons, and the personages of his time. At his death in 1824, Lord Byron had written sixteen of seventeen cantos, whilst canto XVII went unfinished.The poetical narrative of Don Juan (1819-24) is told in sixteen thousand lines, [4] arranged in seventeen cantos, written in ottava rima (eighth rhyme); each stanza is composed of eight iambic pentameters, with the couplet rhyme scheme of ab ab ab cc. The ottava rima uses the final rhyming couplet as a line of humour, to achieve a rhetorical anticlimax by way of an abrupt transition, from a lofty style of writing to a vulgar style of writing.