Don Juan quotes Flashcards
(14 cards)
Narrator’s literary criticism
Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope
Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey;
Because the first is crazed beyond all hope,
The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthey;
Narratorial wandering, book III
But let me to my story, I must own
If I have a fault, it is digression,
Leaving my people to proceed alone
While I soliloquize beyond expression
Narratorial irony
The regularity of my design
Forbids all wandering as the worst of sinning
And therefore I shall open with a line
(Although it cost me half an hour in spinning)
Narrating somewhat of Don Juan’s father,
And also of his mother, if you’d rather
Leslie A. Marchland, 1976
The substance of the “story” is always modified by his love of mockery and mischief.
Form of satire
I shall take a much serious air
Than I have yet done, in this epic satire
Narrator’s judgment of language
I hate all mystery and that air
Of claptrap, which your recent poets prize
Narrator’s irony, book IX
I cannot stop to alter words once written
Epic form
My poem’s epic and is meant to be
Divided in twelve books, each book containing
A list of ships and captains and kings reigning
After the style of Virgil and Homer,
So that my name of Epic’s no misnomer.
Social satire of English upper class woman
She knew the Latin - that is, ‘the Lord’s prayer’
And Greek - the alphabet - I’m nearly sure;
She read some French romances here and there,
Although her mode of speaking was not pure
For native Spanish she had no care
Social satire of English woman
In short she was a walking calculation,
Miss Edgeworth’s novels stepping from their covers,
Or Mrs Trimmer’s books on education.
Byron’s witty rhyme
But - Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,
Inform us truly, have they not hen-peck’d you all?
Richard Cronin, 2006 on poetic register
Poetic register ascends to the epic and classical at point, but it’s also concerned with necessities of life. Byron dabbles with semantics from sciences, instruments, experiments, parodying Milton’s education for an epic poet.
William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Comic Writers, 1819
Comic writing reveals serious truths about human nature.
Laughter comes from seeing incongruity between appearance and reality.
Lord Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions and Times
Where freedom is repressed, people resort to irony, satire, buffoonery and burlesque.
If an argument cannot stand up to mockery, it can’t be very good or true.
