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Don Juan

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For other uses, see Don Juan (disambiguation).

Don Juan (Spanish, or Don Giovanni in Italian) is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest) by Tirso de Molina is a play set in the fourteenth century that was published in Spain around 1630. Evidence suggests it is the first written version of the Don Juan legend. Among the best known works about this character today are Molière's play Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre (1665), Byron's epic poem Don Juan (1821), José de Espronceda's poem El estudiante de Salamanca (1840) and José Zorrilla's play Don Juan Tenorio (1844). The most influential version of all is Don Giovanni, an opera composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, first performed in Prague in 1787 (with Giacomo Casanova probably in the audience) and itself the source of inspiration for works by E. T. A. Hoffmann, Alexander Pushkin, Søren Kierkegaard, George Bernard Shaw and Albert Camus.

Don Juan in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, a painting by Max Slevogt

Don Juan is used synonymously for "womanizer", especially in Spanish slang, and the term Don Juanism is sometimes used as a synonym for satyriasis.

Don Juan legend

Don Juan is a rogue and a libertine who takes great pleasure in seducing women and (in most versions) enjoys fighting their champions. Later, in a graveyard, Don Juan encounters a statue of Don Gonzalo, the dead father of a girl he has seduced, Doña Ana de Ulloa, and impiously invites the father to dine with him; the statue gladly accepts. The father's ghost arrives for dinner at Don Juan's house and in turn invites Don Juan to dine with him in the graveyard. Don Juan accepts and goes to the father's grave, where the statue asks to shake Don Juan's hand. When he extends his arm, the statue grabs hold and drags him away to Hell.[1]

Pronunciation

In Castilian Spanish, Don Juan is pronounced [doŋˈxwan]. The usual English pronunciation is /ˌdɒnˈwɑːn/, with two syllables and a silent "J". However, in Byron's epic poem it rhymes with ruin and true one, indicating that it was intended to have the trisyllabic spelling pronunciation /ˌdɒnˈdʒuːən/. This would have been characteristic of his English literary predecessors who often deliberately imposed partisan English pronunciations on Spanish names, such as Don Quixote /ˌdɒnˈkwɪksət/.

Haidee

 
The Finding of Don Juan by Haidee by Ford Madox Brown

Haidee is a beautiful Greek girl in Don Juan, who, falling in love with the hero and losing him, came to a tragic end.[citation needed]

Chronology of works derived from the story of Don Juan

There is also a book from Jozef Toman with name The life and death of don Miguel de Manara. Both the Flynn and Fairbanks versions turn Don Juan into a likeable rogue, rather than the heartless seducer that he is usually presented as being. The Flynn movie even has him successfully foiling a treasonous plot in the Spanish royal court. Shaw's play turns him into a philosophical character who enjoys contemplating the purpose of life. Beers' play turns him into a poetic, epic character recoiling from the debasing popular image of womanizer and cheap lover.

In one of the episodes of the Sharpe series of historical TV movies, Richard Sharpe, played by Sean Bean refers to a fellow officer as a kind of Don Juan. This is before Byron's poem was published, but in a historical sense, the character was still known about at the time the episode was set.

References

  1. ^ The Legend of Don Juan, Theatre Arts at the California Institute of Technology.
  2. ^ http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_de_Zamora
  3. ^ Apocryphal Tales, Karel Čapek.
  4. ^ The Lost Diary of Don Juan.

Further reading

  • Macchia, Giovanni (1995) [1991]. Vita avventure e morte di Don Giovanni (in Italian). Milano: Adelphi. ISBN 88-459-0826-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  • Said Armesto, Víctor (1968) [1946]. La leyenda de Don Juan (in Spanish). Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  • Guillaume Apollinaire: Don Juan (1914).
  • Michel de Ghelderode: Don Juan (1928).
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