George Gordon Byron

Don Juan (Annotated) George Gordon Byron

Differentiated book- It has a historical context with research of the time-Don Juan by George Gordon Byron. It is a satirical poem created by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan. Lord Byron portrays Don Juan not as a womanizer, but as someone easily seduced by women. It is a variant of the epic form that Byron himself called "satire". Byron completed 16 songs, leaving song 17 unfinished because of his death in 1824. Byron claimed that he had no ideas in his mind as to what would happen in subsequent songs when writing his work. When the first two songs were published anonymously in 1819, the poem was criticized for its "immoral content", although it was also very popular. The story, told over seventeen songs, begins with the birth of Don Juan. As a young man he is sexually precocious and has an affair with a friend of his mother. Her husband finds out and Don Juan is sent to Cádiz. On the way he is shipwrecked but survives and meets the daughter of a pirate, whose crew sells Don Juan as a slave. The wife of a wealthy sultan buys Don Juan and disguises him as a woman so that he can sneak him into his palace. Don Juan escapes, joins the Russian army, and rescues a Muslim girl named Leila. Don Juan meets Catalina la Grande, who asks him to join his court.