George Noel Gordon

1. George Noel Gordon

2. Don Juan • the plot of the poem The story is about a young man of Seville, Don Juan, who has a love affair with an older and married woman. His pious mother, accordingly, sends him abroad to keep him from further indiscretions. He is shipwrecked but, naturally, survives. He and his few fortunate companions finally come to a Greek island and there he is comforted by Haide, the beautiful daughter of a pirate. When Haide's father discovers that Juan and his daughter are in love he has Juan put in chains and sent away on one of his ships. Haide goes mad and dies. Juan is sold into slavery in Constantinople. His purchaser is a sultana who has fallen in love with his manly beauty. His troubles, however, are far from over. The sultana becomes jealous and orders Juan's death. The boy manages to escape and joins the Russian army. His gallantry and handsomeness attract the favorable attention of Catherine the Great, who was notorious throughout Europe for her amorousness. Catherine sends Juan on a political mission to England. This is the point at which the story halts.

3. Don Juan • the theme of the poem • In a certain sense, indeed, Don Juan can be read as a comic poem that has beneath its surface some profoundly valuable things to be said about life. The tone is irreverent; however, the irreverence stems from the poet's hatred for hypocrisy, smugness, and sickening sanctimoniousness. First in the first Canto, the poet makes a direct satirical comment on the bourgeois-aristocratic society in England and exposes thoroughly their parasitic life of luxury and idleness such as that of Juan's mother. • In the Haidee episode, the poet also calls up the Greek people to rise against their Turkish ruler and gain their natural independence and freedom. In this episode the poet inserted the famous song “The Isles of Greece” in which he repeated his earlier utterance in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and elsewhere. • Especially important are Byron's fiery speeches against tyranny and for revolution(Cantos 8 and 9). He also shows his belief that people will rise up one day against the tyrants and that revolution is the only remedy to change the world.

4. Don Juan Background information • The style of the poem Don Juan is Byron's most enduring achievement. It is a vast, sprawling comic poem. During his residence in Italy, Byron became interested in Italian poets of the Renaissance. He became particularly interested in their ability to alternate from the jaunty and gay to the sentimental. He observed how the Italians used the lively language of everyday speech but interspersed it with deliberately “poetic” language. He recognized that the Italian ottava rima was suitable to the expression of his own devil-may-care, defiant, cynical but emotion-fraught view of the universe. Don Juan owes much to Italian poetry. During his stay in Italy, Byron saw the possibility of imitating the Italian ottava rima in his masterpiece. The Italian ottava rima It is similar to the Spenserian stanza of Childe Harold Pilgrimage. It is also predominantly iambic pentameter. It dispenses, however, with the expanded ninth line and thus it achieves a rapidity and raciness that the Spenserian stanza deliberately avoids. The rhyme scheme of the ottava rima is different from the Spenserian stanza in that its pattern of rhymes runs abababcc. It proved to be a stanza admirably suited to Byron's mocking, sardonic view of life.

5. Don Juan • Background information The dazzling variety of incidents, scenes, and moods makes this poem a masterpiece. The inexhaustible energy of the ottava rima stanzas is another reason for the poem's popularity. And Byron's comments on an almost endless number of subjects — love, selfishness, generosity, heroism, cowardice, jealousy, politics — add to the importance of a work that only pretends to be light and frivolous. Robert Southey vs Byron The poem is mockingly dedicated to Robert Southey. At the time, Southey was considered one of the most important of the Romantic poets. In 1813 he was made Poet Laureate, a traditional honor given by the Crown. The fact that the king extended this honor to Southey shows not only that his poetry was highly regarded but that his political ideas were acceptable to the Government. He was safe. Like Wordsworth and Coleridge, with whom he had been friendly and with whom he made up that band of poets called the “Lake Poets” , Southey once had advocated revolutionary ideas. Like them he later changed his mind and became a conservative. And as such, he attracted Byron's withering scorn.