Byron's Don Juan and the Don Juan Legend
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:26th Jun '97
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This study is a contextual reading of Byron's epic poem Don Juan which argues that the importance of the Don Juan legend has been considerably underestimated. Contemporary histories--critical, political, theatrical, and personal--reveal that innocent or neutral readings of the poem were precluded by the figure's notoriety. It demonstrates the invitation which the poem was seen to offer to specific categories of readership--especially those of women and of the working classes--and how their reading not only contributes to the meaning of the text but makes that reading inherently political. The scope of the book includes other versions of the Don Juan legend. It also engages throughout with a critique of traditional myth-criticism, using instead Lévi-Strauss's more inclusive definition of what constitutes a myth. It considers those discourses which have spoken of the Don Juan legend---philosophical, psychoanalytical, speech-act---and applies postmodernist and feminist theories to a consideration of both Byron's poem and the legend itself.
Recently won the British Academy Rose Crawshay prize of £500
ISBN: 9780198184324
Dimensions: 224mm x 143mm x 24mm
Weight: 497g
320 pages