Don Juan 243counsel. His true companions are few but loyal.
These are Faithful and Hopeful, the two virtues
a pilgrim must have in order to stay the course to
the Celestial City. And because of this rejection
of the world on Christian’s part, the world rejects
Christian. This is most clearly seen in the episode
of Vanity Fair, which is a thinly disguised portrait of
the whole ungodly system of secular society. When
Christian and Faithful refuse to take part in the
fair, they are imprisoned and tortured, and Faithful
is killed. Christian’s opposition to the secular world
is also seen when he is crossing the river flowing
directly outside the Celestial City. The river, which
stands for a believer’s death and passage from this
world to the next, threatens to overwhelm Chris-
tian, who becomes convinced that all has been in
vain and that he will be swallowed up by the waves.
However, Christ himself appears to him in a vision
and encourages him, enabling him to finish the
crossing. This is the ideal capstone experience of a
narrowly defined religion that helped many people
like Christian and John Bunyan to make sense of
this life’s trials and find hope in an expectation of
eternal bliss.
Matthew Horn
BYRON, GEORGE GORDON
BYRON, LORD Don Juan (1817–
1824)
While the legend of Don Juan had circulated in sev-
eral European countries, the Spanish play El burla-
dor de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (1630) by Tirso de
Molina, is considered its first literary expression. Of
the innumerable versions that the legend spawned,
those by Molière (1665), Mozart (1787), and Lord
Byron (written 1817–24) are well known. There are
two film versions, which transform the cruel heart-
breaker into a lovable rogue. George Bernard Shaw,
expectedly, projects him as contemplating the mean-
ing and purpose of life. Not unexpectedly, Byron
(1788–1824) transforms the cheap and shameful
womanizer of popular legend into one easily, even
helplessly, seduced by libidinous women.
The poem quickly moves on to describe the
young Don Juan’s sexual misadventures and his
mother’s decision to send him abroad. Shipwrecked
and washed ashore, Don Juan is rescued by a Greek
pirate’s young daughter, with whom he falls in love.
Her father, enraged, succeeds in putting an end to
their relationship. Don Juan is sold as a slave to a
Turkish princess who loves him passionately. Escap-
ing, he joins the Russian army against the Turks and
attracts the attention of the Russian empress, who
sends him to England on a diplomatic mission.
The English setting provides Byron the oppor-
tunity to satirize the English. There is wide-ranging
social, political, and ideological criticism. The aris-
tocracy is denounced for material greed, hypocrisy,
and pervasive vulgarity. Passionless English mar-
riages of convenience are criticized. The apparently
pointless pastimes of the bored upper classes are
ridiculed.
The poem was unfinished at the time of Byron’s
death in 1824. But there is little evidence that Don
Juan would have ended in Hell as he does in the
Spanish legend. Byron projects him more as a victim
of social corruption; uses his character to hang his
seriously intended and articulated criticism of the
sociopolitical life of the time; and presents, as Goethe
put it, “a sharp and penetrating view of the world.”
Gulshan TanejaeducatiOn in Don Juan
While Lord Byron’s Don Juan’s central preoccupa-
tion is with Juan’s romantic antics and the speaker’s
myriad digressive comments on contemporary soci-
ety, the issue of education takes a central role in the
epic’s opening sequence, which frames the remainder
of the tale. In addition, the care that Juan takes to
educate his charge, Leila, suggests a different mode
of approaching moral education. As most clearly
demonstrated in the descriptions of Juan’s educa-
tion and his selection of Leila’s governess, Byron’s
epic questions the effects of a chaste education and
strongly suggests that better balance is necessary to
equip youths to face the world’s temptations.
As the epic opens, the speaker introduces Juan’s
mother and primary tutor, Donna Inez, as... a walking calculation,
Miss Edgeworth’s novels stepping from
their covers,
Or Mrs. Trimmer’s books on education,