There was a fragment of poetry found on the back of the manuscript of the first canto: The vigor and power of Byron’s verse is remarkable. His comic misadventures are told with wit, style, and heart. In Byron’s work, Don Juan is actively harassed by one woman after another. The story is a funny twist on the old legend of Don Juan, the great seducer of innocent women. He began experimenting with ‘ottava rima’ in 1817, and began writing Don Juan a year later. But it was also a bold and challenging technical choice for him as a poet. Byron’s choice of the form defined the character of his epic. You need three rhymes for every stanza, with most of the rhymes consisting of two or three syllables. When you write ‘ottava rima’ in English, you automatically write a comedy. But consider the Italian and English languages, – Italian has far more polysyllabic words and natural rhymes than English. ‘Ottava rima’ was the standard verse form of Renaissance Italian poetry, and – in its native tongue (Italian) – the verse can be used for powerful comic and tragic effect. Entitled The Monks and the Giants or, alternatively, Whistlecraft, the work was two cantos of a burlesque narrative written in the Italian ‘ottava rima’ style. Byron’s original intent, included in a letter to Thomas Moore, was to be “a little quietly facetious upon everything.” He was also inspired by a minor poem published in 1817 by John Hookham Frere. However, we can assume Byron enjoyed writing Don Juan, for he worked on the poem from 1818 until his death in 1824, leaving the 17th canto incomplete.ĭon Juan is without doubt a comic masterpiece.

They considered its focus to be beneath Byron’s talent and a waste of his time, as well as deeply offensive.

Neither his friends or publisher were keen on the work his last mistress, Countess Teresa Guiccioli, pleaded with him to stop writing it. Byron published the first two cantos anonymously.

Don Juan is Byron’s great satire, – his great epic – unfinished at his death, and condemned as immoral in his lifetime.

Lord byron don juan poem