Don Juan, Canto 5

By Byron, George Gordon, Lord

Book Id: WPLBN0002950550
Format Type:
File Size: 36.42 MB
Reproduction Date: 2009

Title:	Don Juan, Canto 5
Author:	Byron, George Gordon, Lord
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Poetry, Poetry
Collections:	Audio Books Collection, Don Juan, Canto 5
Historic Publication Date:	1819
Publisher:	LibriVox Audio Books


Citation APA MLA Chicago George Gordon Byron, B. L. (1819). Don Juan, Canto 5. Retrieved from http://self.gutenberg.org/

Description
Juan, captured by Turkish pirates and sold into slavery is bought by a beautiful Princess as her toy-boy. Dressed as an odalisque, he is smuggled into the Sultan's harem for a steamy assignation. Unbelievably, Byron's publisher almost baulked at this feast of allusive irony, blasphemy (mild), calumny, scorn, lesse-majeste, cross-dressing, bestiality, assassination, circumcision and dwarf-tossing. This was the last Canto published by the stuffy John Murray (who had, however, made a tidy fortune on the earlier parts of the Epic). Although Byron's mood starts, after this, to grow darker and his bitterness at English hypocrisy to grow sharper, his discursive comedy and precise and intriguing rhyme is rarely better than in Canto V. (Summary by Peter Gallagher)

Summary
Electronic recorded live performance of a reading

Excerpt
Poetry