Brush up your Byron: featuring satire, politics and Lucifer/Michael slash

[selenak]

So here I was, reading something looking back on the Bush years, when a quote from Byron about George III. nagged in my mind, which I always thought to be the best summary of W. I looked up The Vision of Judgment, and there indeed it was. It also reminded me of something else, namely, how immensely readable much of Byron's work is still today, and

Comments

[selenak]

I agree that girl on girl action is very much male fantasy today (well I suppose it was then, too, only the guys didn't write about it in above the desk sold epics), but Juan's gender ambiguity isn't limited to the harem episode; he's given the conventionally "feminine" role of object of desire, damsel and object of seduction (instead of aggressive seducer) throughout, and the emphasis on his boyish beardless looks is ongoing, too. If you consider that for Byron's audience/readers the most recent version of the Don Juan archetype would have been the da Ponte/Mozart Don Giovanni, the difference is especially marked. Then there's the fact Juan is called and referred to as Juana throughout the harem scenes. Basically Byron took an archetype of hyper masculinity and at the very least androgynized him.

I can't help but think that describing Southey as big ol' bore was an ever greater insult than the epithet of "dry Bob" (i.e. masturbation without ejaculation) that Byron slipped into the Introduction of Don Juan. Although it's kind of hilarious that he basically accuses Southey of having no creative mojo, to put it into Austin Powers speak.

Yes to both. *g* I'd feel sorry for Southey, but his patronizing letter to Charlotte B. was so patronizing and "look here, little lady" like that I can't help but feel he had it coming. Even if technically the Byron ridicule happened first. :)