Book Description
Don Juan, Byron's best poem, is a sensational radical satire. It uses the legend of Don Juan to expose the male fantasies behind Romanticism and 19thcentury public culture. Critics feared that the poem was a manual for vice and would corrupt society. Should England's best selling author have been censored? This book looks at how Europe's most famous literary celebrity shows his dark side in Don Juan, a canonical long poem and a pop culture masterpiece.
Library of Congress
"In July 1819 London was rocked by the appearance of Don Juan, an 'anonymous' poem by Lord Byron, Europe's most famous author. Over the next five years Byron battled with censors and accusations of immorality to get his greatest poem published. The adventures of Don Juan are the basis for this irreverent satire of Regency society and of the male fantasies that structured public culture in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Charles Donelan looks at Byron's masterpiece as a successful combination of serious literary ambition and outrageous pop culture references."--BOOK JACKET.
