Don Juan Cantos Annotated
TL;DR An up-dated draft of my “Annotated Don Juan” is available. It now provides notes and illustrations for Cantos I, III and IX. Get it here and read along with the narration. At the end…
Why I like Don Juan
Just now there’s a lot of interest in theories of behaviour as ‘signalling’. For example, education choices and curricula are said to be “about” signalling wealth or conformity with corporate ethics rather than about getting…
Catching up… and an announcement
Visitors to this site who know some of Lord Byron’s early lyric and love poetry — perhaps encountered at school — are sometimes puzzled by his longest work, Don Juan. Even repelled. They’re struck by the…
An audio recording of Canto IX of Byron’s Don Juan
Here’s a recording — about 2‑years old — of Canto IX of Don Juan. The recording (MP3) is in three parts. It’s best to read along with the text of the poem if you can because…
Don Juan annotated — a work in progress
For some time I have been working, in desultory fashion, on an annotated version of Don Juan. You can download the current version from that link. Would you kindly take a look and tell me…
The First Line of Don Juan
Byron cheekily begins his greatest poem in precisely the wrong way for an “epic”: ”I want a hero!…” Nothing could be more absurd than an Epic without a hero. The essence of an Epic is…
Stand-up poetry
The more time I spend with “Don Juan” the more I am convinced that it is crucial, for an understanding of the poem, to remember that it is a performance, not a conventional text. I’ve…
Canto VI and the tumult of 1822
Canto VI begins, in full naughty-Don Juan-style, with a politically incorrect (then as now, for diffferent reasons) defence of passion. Byron sidles into the story-line briefly to recall the last scenes of Canto V, then…
A sample recording Canto VI
This project is gathering steam… or, something possibly more energetic than steam. Here is a sample from my never previously released recording of Canto VI of Byron’s Don Juan. It’s the first 61 verses that…
A talk on Byron & Don Juan
A few weeks ago, the chair of a poetry group in one of the city Clubs in Melbourne (where such things still exist) invited me to give a talk on Don Juan. What I did,…