14 h 32 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 357 pagesHardcover · 6 × 9 in · 357 pagesAbout this book
What if the famous seducer is a kind young man swept along by everyone else’s desires?
In Lord Byron’s long comic poem Don Juan, a young Spaniard’s careful upbringing offers little protection against love and scandal. His mother, Donna Inez, wants him pure and respectable. Donna Julia, a clever married woman, unsettles those plans. Juan’s journey opens in Seville, where desire and the need to appear virtuous pull in different directions.
Beyond Seville lie shipwreck, an island romance, a sultan’s palace and fashionable drawing rooms. Yet Juan shares the stage with a narrator who refuses to stay on course. He interrupts adventures with jokes, complaints and attacks on hypocrisy. Byron’s satire turns from love to war and politics, asking why people condemn desire while excusing cruelty and the abuse of power.
What you’ll discover
- An unexpected romantic hero Meet a good-natured Juan who is pursued more often than he pursues.
- Love on a Greek island Encounter Haidee, the pirate’s daughter who finds Juan washed onto the shore.
- A narrator without restraint Follow a restless voice that leaves the plot behind to joke, complain and challenge.
- Society caught pretending Watch Byron expose the distance between respectable appearances and the desires beneath them.
- Verse with a comic turn Discover ottava rima, where alternating rhymes lead into a closing pair of lines.
Who will love it
Readers who enjoy sharp wit, outrageous rhymes, travel through many countries, and a narrator who talks back, jokes about poets and politicians, and turns from comedy to feeling in a single stanza.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A poet picks an old rake for his hero
- A sixteen year old meets Donna Julia
- The ship goes down and the survivors starve
- On a Greek island Juan falls in love with Haidee
- Sold as a slave and dressed as a girl
- The storming of Ismail through Juan's eyes
- From the court of Catherine to the roads of England
- Lord Henry's house party and a ghost in the gallery
- What the poem is really about and how it is told
Who’s who
- Don JuanA handsome young Spaniard who drifts through love, danger and fame, usually led by feeling rather than plan.
- Donna InezJuan's learned, strict mother, who tries to keep her son pure and sends him abroad after scandal.
- Donna JuliaA young married woman of Seville who vows to love Juan only as a friend and fails.
- HaideeA pirate's daughter on a Greek island who rescues Juan and gives him her whole heart.
- LambroHaidee's father, a quiet, dangerous pirate and slave trader who returns to his island.
- GulbeyazThe Sultan's proud favourite wife, who buys Juan and expects to be obeyed in love.
- Lady Adeline AmundevilleAn admired English hostess at Norman Abbey, sure of her own virtue and eager to arrange Juan's life.
- Aurora RabyA quiet young Catholic orphan, serious and unimpressed, who draws Juan's attention in England.
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- The key ideas in about 7 minutes, to read today.
- Paperback
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
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Don Juan in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Don Juan
by Lord Byron · 1819
A poet picks a Spanish rake as his hero and sends him through shipwreck, harems and a siege.
Challenging10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Why would a poet pick a seducer for his hero? Lord Byron says the newspapers invent a new hero every year, and the age soon finds each one false, so he takes the old stage rogue Don Juan instead.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A poet picks an old rake for his hero
Byron opens with a complaint. So the narrator chooses the old Spanish stage rogue Don Juan and promises to tell his life from the very beginning, not from the middle as epic poets do.
Juan is born in Seville to Don Jose, a careless man with mistresses, and Donna Inez, a learned lady who knows mathematics and the plays of Calderon by heart and believes she has no faults at all. Their marriage dissolves into spying, lawyers and gossip, and it ends only when Jose dies. Inez then raises the boy alone and keeps anything improper out of his lessons, so his classic poets arrive cut down, with the rude passages gathered in an appendix.
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What is Don Juan by Lord Byron about?
It is a comic epic poem about a young Spaniard, Juan, whose adventures take him from Seville through a shipwreck, a Greek island, a Turkish palace, a Russian siege and the court of Catherine the Great to English high society.
Is Byron's Don Juan the same as the legend of the seducer?
Byron chooses the familiar stage figure of Don Juan. His Juan is more often seduced than seducing, and the poem uses him to look at society, war, power and hypocrisy with humour.
Why is Don Juan called a satire?
The narrator mocks poets, politicians, generals, churchmen and respectable manners of his day, naming Wellington, Castlereagh and the Lake poets, and uses jokes and wild rhymes to expose cant.
The author
Lord Byron
1788–1824 · English Romantic poet
Lord Byron (1788–1824) was an English poet born in London. He lived in Britain, Switzerland, Italy and Greece. He wrote Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, published between 1812 and 1818, and Don Juan, published in parts from 1819 to 1824. He died at Missolonghi in Greece.
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