Don Juan [don wahn or, Sp., dawn hwahn for 1, 2; especially for 4 don joo-uhn]  

Don Juan

  [don wahn or, Sp., dawn hwahn for 1, 2; especially for 4 don joo-uhn]
Don Juan, legendary profligate. He has a counterpart in the legends of many peoples, but the Spanish version of the great libertine has become the most universal. At the height of his licentious career, Don Juan seduces the daughter of the commander of Seville and kills her father in a duel. When he later visits a statue of his victim and jeeringly invites it to a feast, the statue comes to life and drags Juan off to hell. The earliest-known dramatization of the story is El burlador de Sevilla (1630), attributed to Gabriel Téllez, who wrote under the pseudonym Tirso de Molina. Molière's Le Festin de Pierre (1665) and Mozart's opera Don Giovanni (1787) are perhaps the most famous treatments of the theme. Among the many other literary works that use the unscrupulous gallant as the hero are Byron's Don Juan, Espronceda's El estudiante de Salamanca, and Shaw's Man and Superman.
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Don Juan

Fictional character famous as a heartless womanizer but also noted for his charm and courage. In Spanish legend, Don Juan was a licentious rogue who seduced a young girl of noble family and killed her father. Coming across a stone effigy of the father in a cemetery, he invited it home to dine with him, and the ghost of the father arrived for dinner as the harbinger of Don Juan's death. The legend of Don Juan was first written down by Tirso de Molina, who gave it an original twist in his tragedy The Seducer of Seville (1630). The story was subsequently taken up by many other artists including W.A. Mozart, in the opera Don Giovanni (1787); Molière and George Bernard Shaw, in plays; and Lord Byron in his long satiric poem Don Juan (1819–24).

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
Don Juan

Don Juan (Spanish) or Don Giovanni (Italian) is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, 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. The two best known works about this character today are "Don Giovanni" an opera written by Lorenzo da Ponte with music composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, first performed in 1787 and Don Juan Tenorio, by José Zorrilla, written in 1844.

Don Juan is used synonymously for "womaniser", especially in Spanish slang.

The 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 the dead father of a girl he has seduced, and, impiously, invites him 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.

Other Don Juan literature

Another, more recent version of the legend of Don Juan is José Zorrilla's (1817–1893) nineteenth century play Don Juan Tenorio (1844) wherein Don Juan is a villain. It begins with Don Juan meeting his old friend Don Luís, and the two men recounting their conquests and vile deeds of the year past. In terms of the number of murders and conquests (seductions), Don Juan out-scores his friend Don Luís. Outdone, Don Luís replies that his friend has never had a woman of pure soul; sowing in Don Juan a new, tantalizing desire to sleep with a Woman of God. Also, Don Juan informs his friend that he plans to seduce his (Don Luís's) future wife. Don Juan seduces both his friend's wife and Doña Inés. Incensed, Doña Inés's father and Don Luís try avenging their lost prides, but Don Juan kills them both, despite his begging them not to attack, for, he claims, Doña Inés has shown him the true way. Don Juan becomes nervous when visited by the ghosts of Doña Inés and her father; the play concludes with a tug of war between Doña Inés and her father, for Don Juan, the daughter eventually winning and pulling him to Heaven.

In Aleksandr Blok's poetic depiction, the statue is only mentioned as a fearful approaching figure, while a deceased Donna Anna ("Anna, Anna, is it sweet to sleep in the grave? Is it sweet to dream unearthly dreams") is waiting to return to him in the fast-approaching hour of his death.

In the novella La Gitanilla (The Little Gypsy Girl), by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the character who falls in love with the eponymous heroine is named Don Juan de Cárcamo, possibly related to the popular legend.

The 1736 play titled Don Juan (Don Giovanni Tenorio, ossia Il Dissoluto) was written by Carlo Goldoni, a famous Italian comic playwright of the time.

In Phantom of the Opera, the title of the opera written by the Phantom is Don Juan Triumphant.

In the musical Les Misérables, in the song "Red and Black" Grantaire compares Marius to Don Juan.

The Romantic poet Lord Byron wrote an epic version of Don Juan that is considered his masterpiece. It was unfinished at his death, but portrays Don Juan as the innocent victim of a repressive Catholic upbringing who unwittingly stumbles upon and into love time and again. For example, in Canto II he is shipwrecked and washed ashore an island, from where he is rescued by the beautiful daughter of a Greek pirate, who nurses him to health: a loving relationship develops. When her pirate father returns from his journey, however, he is angry and sells Don Juan into slavery, where, in turn, a Sultan's wife buys him for her pleasure. Lord Byron's Don Juan is less seducer than victim of women's desire and unfortunate circumstance.

Moreover, according to Harold Bloom, the Edmund character in King Lear, by William Shakespeare, anticipates the Don Juan archetype by a few decades, while intellectual philosopher Albert Camus represents Don Juan as an archetypical absurd man in the essay The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). In Philippine literature, Don Juan is the protagonist of the Ibong Adarna story, who, though portrayed in a good light, is known to have a weakness for beautiful women and tends to womanizing, having at least two simultaneous relationships (Doña Maria, Doña Leonora, Doña Juana). George Bernard Shaw's play Man and Superman also is a Don Juan play; described by Shaw in its preface.

Pronunciation

In Castilian Spanish, Don Juan is . The usual American pronunciation is , with two syllables and a silent "J". However, in Byron's epic poem it humorously rhymes with ruin and true one, suggesting that it was intended to have the trisyllabic spelling pronunciation /ˌdɒnˈdʒuːən/, close to the /ˌdɒnˈdʒuːan/ common in Britain today.

Chronology of works derived from the story of Don Juan

Also there is 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.

References

Further reading

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External links

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Last updated on Saturday October 11, 2008 at 09:38:50 PDT (GMT -0700)
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