They draw lots (using Julia's letter for paper) to see who will be eaten-sadly it is Pedrillo. Juan and his fellow survivors cram into a longboat and eventually find themselves starving. Juan embarks on a voyage from Cadiz on the ship Trinidada, accompanied by 3 servants and a tutor Pedrillo, still in love with Julia (and seasick), intending to travel for 4 years. He carries a tearful letter of goodbye from Julia upon his departure.

Donna Inez decides that her son should travel and see the world, so makes plans to send him to Cadiz. Alfonso files for divorce, and Julia is sent to a nunnery. But Don Alfonso returns, and eventually discovers Juan's shoes next to the bed, and then Juan, whereupon Juan flees. After Alfonso leaves, a half-smothered and slender Don Juan emerges from the bed where he had hidden all along. Julia makes an extended speech of outrage and indignation. One night Don Alfonso arrives to find Julia in bed with Antonia her maid, but he is suspicious and searches with his lackeys for her suspected male lover unsuccessfully. On a summer day in June, an inadvertent touch of her hand on his leads on to stolen glances, sighs, Platonic love, kissing, etc., and finally she 'consents' (for which Plato and Inez are to blame). Such things are more common in sun-drenched climes. Inez strikes up an affair with Don Alfonso, and in turn Alfonso's 23 y/o lovely wife eyes the 16 y/o Don Juan. His classical education is intended by his mother to shield him from salacious material (this effort is unsuccessful). Conveniently he dies, leaving Juan the sole heir. In Sevilla, Juan's father Jóse is married to Juan's mother Inez, but has various affairs, causing her to plot against him and file for divorce.

The full text of Don Juan can be found atīyron speaks out against his contemporary poet rivals Southey (a Tory turncoat), Wordsworth, the 'intellectual eunuch Castlereagh', etc. The following is a bare outline of the core plot of the protagonist, without any attempt to review the material contained in theĭigressions. Note that Juan is probably pronounced 'Jew - on' in view of the The poem is packed full of topical digressions on politics, poets, etc., which add to the humor, particularly inasmuch as the poet, writing pretty much in Byron's own persona, often tries without success to bring himself back to the stated subject at hand. Overall Impression: This is a never-completed satirical mock-epic, very funny for the first 5 cantos, less so thereafter (there are 17Ĭomments: Unlike Mozart's Don Giovanni, this Don Juan is portrayed as an innocent whom women fall for and try to seduce. Quotations are for the most part taken from that work, as Summary by Michael McGoodwin, prepared 2002įord Madox Brown: The Finding of Don Juan by Haidee (detail)Īcknowledgement: This work has been summarized using the Penguin 1996Įdition. Lord Byron (George Noel Gordon): Don Juan

Don juan by lord byron