Summary of Canto I (our selected stanzas): DJ's parents, youth, education/attraction between DJ and Donna Julia/ criticism of Wordsworth and Coleridge
Consider the difference between Bryon and the narrator, the narrator's viewpoint/judgments/values
(satire and social commentary) and Don Juan's. Through satire, however, these do merge in the poem.
Narrator: Garrulous, improvisational, instrusive, disguised biographical
details
- is not structured according to traditional form or plot (e.g., epic). Focus on the present rather than the past.
- as a character is unheroic, passive, compliant. Consider his upbringing, education.
- is comic and not rooted in traditional, accepted values.
- is more interested in individuality (the narrator?).
- develops a comic vision that is interested in things as they really are, not as they should be (Byron's drama--protagonists who take a stand that is "moral").
The journey in the poem--the narrator's rather than Don Juan's--is a critique against forces (personal, social) that prevent the assertion of self and encourage a denial of self. Don Juan celebrates the vitality, energy of authentic selfhood
Don Juan and Romanticism
- 18th century models - against Wordsworth in the Preface
- Common lanaguage that uses puns/bawdy humor/satirical jokes
- Skepticism about human nature/perceived hypocrisy of societal norms and values
- Interest in sexuality/eroticism
- Democratic/revoluntionary impuses - Shelley's phrase: "skeptical idealism"