Rice University

Don Juan as Anti-EpicAuthor(s): John LauberSource: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 8, No. 4, Nineteenth Century (Autumn,1968), pp. 607-619Published by: Rice UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/449468Accessed: 18/03/2010 21:21

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=rice.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Rice University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Studies in EnglishLiterature, 1500-1900.

http://www.jstor.org

Don Juan as Anti-Epic JOHN LAUBER

Far from being a modern epic, or an adaptation of the epic to the nineteenth century, Don Juan systematically parodies or attacks the major conventions of epic poetry as set forth by neoclassic criticism. The action of an epic poem was expected to be single, and great; the action of Don Juan is purely episodic and often flagrantly "low." The only actions which could be considered great-the shipwreck and the siege of Ismail-are treated with a literal realism that is entirely foreign to the epic spirit. The epic hero should be virtuous and con- stant to some great design; Don Juan is the average man, drifting with every circumstance. Epic poetry was impersonal; Don Juan is the most personal of poems. Physical prowess and heroism in combat were the principal values of the epic; heroism, wars and glory are endlessly ridiculed or condemned in Don Juan. Epic poetry demanded supernatural intervention or at least concern with the affairs of men; Don Juan takes place in an entirely secular world. Byron considers the "truthful- ness" or realism of his own poem its greatest virtue, establishing its moral superiority over the epic, which for him was an outmoded and morally dangerous form.

THE ECHOES OF EPIC poetry in Don Juan are too numerous and obvious ever to have been overlooked, but the relationship of Byron's poem to the epic remains un- clear. Probably the most widely held view has been that Byron, like Milton before him, attempted to "reinterpret and recreate the epic form."1 It will be the argument of this paper that Don Juan's achievement is not to reinterpret or recreate but to destroy the epic form by a comprehensive attack on the whole tradition of epic poetry-its style, its structure, and its values. The epic genre, for Byron, was moribund, no longer a real possibility for a modern poet.

The prestige of the epic during the preceding two centuries and more was enormous and nearly unquestioned. "A heroic poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the greatest work which the soul of man is capable to perform," Dryden had declared in the opening sentence of the preface to his translation of the Aeneid. The "rules" of epic poetry were formulated and re- formulated, and such questions as whether the duration of the action in an epic poem could properly exceed one year were argued at length. Critical interest in England was increased

1George M. Ridenour, The Style of Don Juan (New Haven, 1960), p. 100.

DON JUAN

by the highly successful translations of Dryden and Pope. And epic poetry was not only criticized and translated; new epics were actually written. While Dryden and Pope projected epics which were never composed (perhaps fortunately), the Black- mores and Glovers wrote them. The results, to be sure, were recognized as unsatisfactory. A historian of the subject ob- serves that, with the exception of Milton's works, a history of "heroic poetry" in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Eng- land deals "with three classes of poems-those that never lived, those now dead, and those more dead than alive."2

Yet such failures did not dim the prestige of the form or demonstrate its irrelevance to the contemporary world. Horace Walpole might observe that "Epic poetry is the art of being as long as possible in telling an uninteresting story" and con- clude that "So far from epic poetry being at the head of com- position, I am persuaded that the reason why so exceedingly few have succeeded is from the absurdity of the species,"8 but Walpole's view was heretical. The orthodox evaluation of the epic persisted through the first quarter of the nineteenth cen- tury, encouraging the production of such diverse works as Southey's Madoc and Keats's Hyperion. When the young Wordsworth, freed by a legacy to devote his life to poetry, began to consider a major work, his thoughts apparently turned as naturally to the epic form as Milton's had more than a century and a half before. The major poem that Words- worth actually composed, however, was The Prelude, which offers not an adaptation of the epic, but an alternative to it. Of the major poets between 1670 and 1820, Dryden, Pope, Wordsworth and Keats all planned epics, but, significantly, not one carried out his plan. (The mode in which Dryden and Pope did succeed was the mock-epic.) No critic, however, seems to have drawn the conclusion that this history of abor- tive effort and failure indicated more than the incapacity of particular poets.

Byron's familiarity with the epic tradition might be taken for granted as part of the cultural equipment of an educated English gentleman, and it is confirmed by his own words: "As a child I first read Pope's Homer with a rapture no subse-

'Wm. MacNeile Dixon, English Epic and Heroic Poetry (London, 1912), p. 224. 'Quoted in Hugh T. Swedenberg, "The Theory of the Epic in England, 1650-1800," University of California Publications in English, XV (Berkeley, 1944), 141.

608

JOH N LAUBE R

quent work could ever afford ... As a boy I read Homer in the original, as we have all done."4 The Aeneid would also have been a staple of the schoolroom, and of "modern" epics he was acquainted with Milton's works and with the Geru- salemme Liberata of Tasso. While it is unlikely that Byron, with his distrust of theorizing of any kind, would have read extensively in French and English neoclassic criticism, Dry- den's preface to the Aeneid would have provided him with a compendium of standard opinions. Modern criticism has in- creasingly emphasized Byron's neoclassic affinities, and cer- tainly he possessed a general knowledge of the "rules" as well as of the principal ancient and modern epic poems.

Byron's own work up to Don Juan had nothing in common with epic poetry, and some of his admirers seem to have be- lieved that he should consolidate his frame with a more sub- stantial poem, presumably an epic, that would be worthy of his powers. In 1819 Byron answered such a suggestion from his publisher, John Murray, with his most significant direct statement on the subject: "So you . . . want me to undertake what you call a 'great work'? an Epic poem, I suppose, or some such pyramid . . . You have so many 'divine' poems, is it nothing to have written a Human one? without any of your wornout machinery?"6 Don Juan may be thought of as a more considered and complete reply to Murray's suggestion.

"I want a Hero," the first words of Canto I, mimic the traditional epic opening and at the same time imply that the poet's world cannot supply the materials for such poetry. Of bloodshed it offers an abundance, but of true heroism, nothing. Its numerous "heroes" are the creatures of publicity, easily made and soon forgotten. Byron's final choice, Don Juan, is quite deliberately at the opposite extreme from the epic ideal. Neoclassic critics had frequently held that the epic hero must be morally perfect, and the contrast with Byron's hero hardly needs pointing out (not that Juan is vicious; rather he is simply the average man, well-meaning but weak, and exposed by his charm to temptations considerably more fre- quent and attractive than the average man encounters.) John Dennis had expressed a generally accepted opinion when he asserted that "the Hero of an Epick poem always carries on

'The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, ed. R. E. Prothero (London, 1922), IV, p. 558.

?Letters and Journals, p. 284.

609

DON JUAN

some good and great design,"6 while on the contrary "the central fact about Don Juan is that he has no mission."7 Juan's shipwreck and landing on Haidee's island may remind us of the adventures of Odysseus, but Juan has no kingdom or Penelope to return to (Julia has already been forgotten). It is this lack of purpose that accounts for the frequent critical comments on his "passivity." Juan acts vigorously enough during individual episodes, but he makes no attempt to direct the larger movement of his life. It is true that the actions of Odysseus and Aeneas, for example, are in large part determined by forces beyond their control, but at least they are being guided toward an intelligible goal which they themselves accept. Juan's experiences are merely the result of blind chance-Byron's skepticism is too complete to allow a place even for Fate or Necessity in his universe. By epic standards, then, Don Juan is no hero at all; indeed, he might more accurately be called an anti-hero.

It is conventional enough to lament the absence of genuine heroism in the contemporary world (in whatever century the writer may be living), but Byron's purpose is more interesting and original than that. Satire is directed at the past as well as at the present, and the epic concept of heroism is deflated. The Homeric heroes, as the poem repeatedly makes clear, were simply experts in the "brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art" of war, and no more deserving of honor than their mod- ern counterparts who spill blood in even greater quantities. The Russian "heroes" of the siege of Ismail, Strongenoff and Roguenoff and Chokenoff and their companions (the names make an obvious comment) are quite as heroic and deserving of fame-"Achilles' self was not more grim and gory," (VII, st. 14) the poet remarks. The horrors which ensue on the capture of Ismail are explicitly compared with those that followed the fall of Troy. The words "Glory" and "Hero" hardly ever appear in Don Juan without an ironic connotation. Implicit throughout, and occasionally directly expressed, is an attack on the moral values of the traditional epic, with its praise of war (which Byron made synonymous with mur- der) and military glory. Don Juan was attacked by the prudish for its supposed immorality, but Byron found a far more

'Quoted in Swedenberg, p. 177. 7Brian Wilkie, Romantic Poets and the Epic Tradition (Madison, 1965), p. 212.

610

JOHN LAUBER

serious immorality in that obsession with "conquest and its consequences, which / make epic poesy so rare and rich." (VIII, st. 90).

Souvaroff, the victor of Ismail, is effective as a soldier because he simply overlooks the cost in life and suffering of his achievement: "Suwarrow, who but saw things in the gross / Being much too gross to see them in detail" (VII, st. 72). The similes with which he is introduced are significant. He shines over the Russian camp like a gas lamp, suggesting the glare and glitter of military fame, "Or like a wisp along the marsh so damp / Which leads beholders on a boggy walk" (VII, st. 46). His reputation is a false light, leading those who follow it to destruction. The contrast in outward appearance between this "little, odd old man" (VII, 49) who drilled the awkward squad in person, and the heroes of the Trojan War only emphasizes the essential similarity.

Parallels between the action of Don Juan and that of classi- cal epic are of course not limited to the siege of Ismail. In Canto I, Byron promises his readers "Love, and War, a heavy gale at sea" (the principal ingredients of the Odyssey and Aeneid), and the promise is kept, but in a thoroughly Byronic fashion. The shipwreck of Canto II and the sufferings of the survivors are described with a detailed realism closer to the novel than to any earlier poetry. The casting ashore of Juan on an Aegean island and his rescue by Haidee and her com- panion resemble the landing of Odysseus on Phaecia and his discovery by Nausicaa and her maids, although there is a striking difference between Odysseus's treatment by King Alcinous and Juan's by Lambro. Epic parallels disappear in the farcical Canto V, which contains Juan's adventures in the Sultan's harem, but are at their most insistent during VII and VIII at the siege of Ismail. Even in the English cantos, where narrative movement slows nearly to a stop and the author's digressions become dominant, the epic background is kept in mind. The outstanding example is the feast at Norman Abbey in Canto XV, which commences in the mock- heroic vein:

Great things were now to be achieved at table With massy plate for armour; knives and forks

For weapons....

The epic parallels in Don Juan, then, are numerous, but they are sharply distinguished from their original sources by the

611

DON JUAN

Byronic irony and by a frequently painstaking realism. The settings and action of Don Juan are based primarily on Byron's own experience. When Byron passed beyond the limits of his experience, as in his accounts of shipwreck and war, he chose reliable published sources and followed them carefully. The often praised realism of the English cantos may have been required by the familiarity of his readers with the subject, but Byron took equal pains to achieve accuracy in Juan's more exotic adventures. Byron was perfectly aware of the novelty of his method, and obviously considered it a principal merit of his poem:

Besides, my Muse by no means deals in fiction: She gathers a repertory of facts,

Of course with some reserve and slight restriction, But mostly sings of human things and acts-

And that's one cause she meets with contradiction; For too much truth, at first sight, ne'er attracts;

And were her object only what's called Glory, With more ease, too, she'd tell a different story.

(XIV, st. 13)

Epic poetry was a poetry of "fiction," to use Byron's term. It dealt with imaginary history and fanciful supernatural agen- cies; it falsified the realities of war to create the illusion of Glory. Don Juan, on the other hand, was a poem of fact, "And fact is Truth, the grand desideratum," (VII, st. 80) as Byron at least half-seriously remarks.

Such minute accuracy had never been required of the epic. In his preface to the Aeneid, Dryden defends Virgil's anachron- ism in bringing together Dido and Aeneas, persons who were supposed to have lived two hundred years apart, and it was believed that the epic should be set in a remote age, presumably to prevent any demand for an irrelevant realism. Byron's practice is exactly the opposite: the action of his poem occurs only thirty years before the time of publication, a period which many of his readers would have well remembered. These contrasting attitudes clearly reveal themselves in language as well. With his passion for accuracy, Byron uses the techni- cal jargon of war and seamanship, or the cant of the high- wayman, when the occasion requires (one suspects that he made the occasion require it), whereas the diction of epic poetry was (or was considered by neoclassic critics to be) general and elevated. Dryden explains in his preface that in translating Virgil he "writ not always in the proper terms of

612

JOHN LAU B E R

navigation, land service, or in the cant of any profession" be- cause Virgil had avoided such language, writing "not for mariners, soldiers, astronomers, gard'ners, peasants, etc., but to all in general, and in particular to men and ladies of the first quality, who have been better bred than to be too nicely knowing in the terms."

In fact, a literal realism would have been impossible in any traditional epic, being contrary to the whole spirit of the work. The characters and actions of epic poetry are necessarily larger than life. Morality is hardly involved; it is rather that the major figures of epic poetry are constructed on a larger scale (in their pride, cruelty, wrath, or vengefulness as well as in bravery and perseverance) than actual human beings. Epic poetry, like Greek and Elizabethan tragedy, belongs to what Northrop Frye has called the "high mimetic mode," in which the protagonist, although not possessing supernatural powers, "has authority, passions and powers of expression far greater than ours."8 In the contrasting low mimetic mode, which chronologically succeeds it, "the hero is one of us. We respond to a sense of his common humanity and demand from the poet the same canons of probability that we find in our own experience."9 Frye goes on to point out that with the rise of low mimetic standards the word "hero" itself tends to be- come suspect, as it so obviously does in Byron's poem. Clearly Don Juan, like the eighteenth-century novel, belongs to the low mimetic mode, and in this extremely important respect has more in common with Torn Jones than with the Iliad.

For whatever reasons, it is plain that since at least the middle of the seventeenth century the high mimetic mode, whether in poetry or drama, has become increasingly difficult and finally almost impossible to practice. In Byron's time the process was well advanced with the establishment of the novel and the serious, but not tragic, prose drama as the most popular literary types. Inevitably, these low mimetic stand- ards were applied to poetry, by writers as different as Byron and Wordsworth (primarily in the Lyrical Ballads). Funda- mentally, we may say, by the early nineteenth century it had become impossible to write epic poetry (except for a hack like Southey), because it was no longer possible to hold the high mimetic view of human nature. Byron's view, in con-

SNorthrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, 1958), p. 34. 9Anatomy of Criticism, p. 34.

613

DON JUAN

trast, is realistic, ironic, and tolerant, aware of human vices and still more of human weaknesses, but accepting them with amused resignation as simply what one must except from such a creature as man. (The obvious exceptions to this gen- eralization are the repeated attacks on war and tyranny- inconsistency is also a principle of Don Juan.)

The structure of Don Juan is equally remote from that of the epic. By beginning with the birth of his hero, Byron de- liberately (and quite literally!) violates Horace's warning against beginning ab ovo. The action of epic poetry, Dryden declares in his preface to Virgil, "is always one, entire, and great. The least and most trivial episodes ... are either neces- sary or convenient to carry on the main design; either so necessary, that, without them, the poem must be imperfect, or so convenient, that no others can be imagined more suitable to the place in which they are." Don Juan systematically breaks these rules; it is a poem which is all episode. Its action is neither one nor entire-in fact there are at least seven actions: Juan's love for Julia, the shipwreck, his affair with Haidee, his adventures as a Turkish slave, the siege of Ismail, his brief career as a favorite of Catherine the Great, and his English experiences, which are broken off not only before they are complete but even before we can see clearly how they might have developed. This final episode was interrupted by Byron's involvement in Greek politics and his sudden death, but, Don Juan being the kind of poem it is, it probably would not have been completed if Byron had lived for another thirty years. His remark to his publisher, Murray, "I have no plan- I had no plan; but I had or have materials,"'0 describes his method accurately. When contrasted with the careful struc- ture of the Aeneid or Iliad, Don Juan seems improvised, and no doubt actually was. It is unlikely, for example, that Byron had planned the English cantos from the outset, and one sus- pects that he did not even know how the developing entangle- ment between Juan, Adeline, and Aurora Raby was to be resolved. (Such uncertainty would account for the narrative slowness and endless digressions of these cantos.) As for the episodes being "necessary," in Dryden's term, they are so only in the sense that the conclusion of each one does, as it must after all, lead to the beginning of the next. But if Byron had decided to omit the shipwreck, the love of Juan and

10Letters and Journals, IV, p. 342.

614

JOHN LAUBER

Haidee, the harem adventure-all of Cantos II through VI, in fact-and had conducted Juan from Cadiz to Ismail in half a dozen stanzas, what reader would sense that anything was lacking? Don Juan is a broken-backed poem, if it can be con- sidered vertebrate at all, divided into two quite sharply dis- tinguished sections, Cantos I through IX which present a series of picaresque adventures leading from Julia's bedroom to that of the Empress Catherine, and the remaining six (much the longest of continuous narrative in the poem) deal- ing with Juan's English experiences. As for Dryden's final criterion of greatness, the only action in Don Juan which can be considered "great" is the siege of Ismail, and we have seen how far Byron's treatment of it departs from the epic spirit.

The comparative formlessness of Don Juan no doubt is related to Byron's philosophical skepticism. He instinctively rebelled against systematic thought, and may well have be- lieved that an elaborate plot, like an elaborate moral code or philosophical system, necessarily led to a distortion of reality in the interests of the system. Byron was quite aware of his own departure from the "rules," as his mocking comment reveals: "The regularity of my design / Forbids all wander- ing as the worst of sinning." Epic poetry consists primarily of dialogue and narration, and in this respect, too, Don Juan is thoroughly un-epic. From the opening canto, commentary threatens to overpower the action, which is sometimes lost sight of for twenty or thirty stanzas at a time. These digres- sions, so characteristic of the poem, are more suggestive of Tristram Shandy than of classical epic.

The style and tone of Don Juan are at the opposite pole from those of epic poetry, at least as neoclassic critics con- ceived of it. "Even the least portion . . . must be of the epic kind: all things must be grave, majestical, and sublime," Dryden declared in his preface. Wit and humor were held to be beneath the dignity of the form, and the wit and flippancy of Don Juan would have immediately disqualified it, in the eyes of Byron's contemporaries, from being considered as an epic. The abrupt and often disconcerting changes of mood, the alternation of sentiment and cynicism, are even more anti- pathetic to the epic spirit. To maintain the continuous dignity of the epic, Milton and Pope had created a highly distinctive poetic diction; Don Juan, on the other hand, draws on all the resources of the language, including the lowest slang, such

616

DON JUAN

as the thieves' jargon in Canto XI or the obscene pun on "dry bob" in the Dedication. Its characteristic diction and syntax, however, are colloquial, as Ronald Bottrall has demonstrated in his essay, "Byron and the Colloquial Tradition." (It is the colloquialism of a cultivated gentleman, of course.) The more pompous epic cliches are occasionally parodied, as in the "Hail, Muse! et cetera" which opens Canto III. Epic poetry does not rely on the single brilliant line, but builds its effects over long and continuously sustained units. Don Juan, on the con- trary, abounds in comic rhymes and epigrams, devices which instantly attract attention to themselves at the expense of the continuing action or prevailing mood. Epic poetry, on the whole, is impersonal, and Homer in particular has tradi- tionally been praised for his success in keeping himself out of his work. Don Juan is the most personal of poems, and its fundamental unity, insofar as it has unity, derives less from the character of Juan (which really does not develop very much, in spite of Ridenour's attempt to show that Juan is gradually sophisticated and corrupted) than from the Byronic personality and world-view.

Epic poetry was the genre preeminently associated by neo- classic critics with the sublime, a quality conspicuously absent in Don Juan. In the final stanza of Canto V, it is true, Byron promises "Let this fifth canto meet with due applause / The sixth shall have a touch of the sublime," but the mockery is obvious-the sixth canto narrates the harem episode! Don Juan contains the romantic, the pathetic, and even the terri- ble-but never the sublime. The language and tone of the poem render it impossible, no doubt, but a more general rea- son can be given. The world of Don Juan is a world in which sublimity cannot exist. "No heroic poem," asserted Dryden, "can be written on the Epicurean principle." His explanation was that epic required the constant guidance and interference of providence or the gods; every remarkable event must seem to be supernaturally inspired. Dryden might have added that supernatural intervention establishes a sense of purpose and significance appropriate to the heroic scale of the characters. Man must be important when the gods are so concerned with his fate.

The world of the epic is, on the whole, a world of unques- tioned moral absolutes. In particular, the concept of heroism is never subjected to analysis or doubt. The world of Don

616

JOHN LAUBER

Juan, however, is secular, skeptical, relativistic, even nihilistic at times. Any positive statement, on whatever subject, seems to inspire the poet with doubt. Life is seen as without purpose or meaning; heroism and glory are illusions which can hardly exist in an age of fact. (On the question of whether this dis- pelling of illusions is beneficial, Byron characteristically wob- bles. Cervantes is quite seriously blamed because he "smiled Spain's chivalry away" [VII, st. 11], thus depriving his country of heroes, but surely Spain was better off without them, if "heroism" means what it has meant throughout Don Juan.) Epic poetry is a celebration of heroism, and heroism cannot exist in the world of Don Juan. The moral pretensions of the epic as set forth by neoclassic critics ("to form the mind to heroic virtue by example," in Dryden's words) become simply laughable.

On a more superficial level, Don Juan contains a good deal of direct ridicule of the epic. Cliches of diction and episode are satirized, as in the well-known catalog of Don Juan's contents in Canto I:

My poem's epic, and is meant to be Divided in twelve books; each book containing,

With Love, and War, a heavy gale at sea, A list of ships, and captains, and kings reigning,

New characters; the episodes are three: A panoramic view of Hell's in training,

After the style of Virgil and of Homer, So that my name of Epic's no misnomer. (I, st. 200)

Byron employs occasionally both the "low" burlesque, or trav- esty, and the "high," or mock-epic. The description of the banquet at Norman Abbey, "With massy plates for armour, knives and forks / For weapons" (XV, st. 62) provides an example of the latter. Stanza six of Canto I illustrates the "low" burlesque, which degrades a serious subject by trivial or flippant treatment. Byron describes the epic hero relating his story (like Odysseus or Aeneas):

And then your hero tells, whene'er you please, What went before-by way of episode,

While seated after dinner at his ease, Beside his mistress in some soft abode,

Palace, or garden, paradise, or cavern, Which serves the happy couple for a tavern.

At times the epic is made synonymous with boredom:

617

DON JUAN

... 'twould not be hard to bring Some fine examples of the Epogee, To prove its grand ingredient is Ennui. (III, st. 97)

In the light of such passages, one can hardly take literally Byron's assertions that Don Juan should be considered as an epic. The context of such claims usually indicates their ironic or flippant quality:

And as she treats of all things, and ne'er retreats From anything, this Epic will contain

A wilderness of the most rare conceits. (XVI, st. 3)

The relationship of Don Juan to the epic tradition is close, continuous, and destructive. It will not do to say, as Ridenour does in his study of the poem, that "in his lesser way and from his secular and predominantly rationalist point of view, Byron is attempting as radical a redefinition of the nature of epic and the epic hero as was Milton in Paradise Lost."1' First, the relationship of the two poems to classical epic is entirely different. Milton accepts the conventional valuation of epic poetry, he uses the epic devices in all seriousness, he claims that his poem resembles but surpasses existing epics because of the greatness of his subject. Don Juan does none of these things. Instead, it ridicules the epic form as a whole and in its details, and regards epic concepts of heroism and glory as disastrous illusions. Second, a secular and skeptical point of view makes epic impossible, as Dryden saw: "No heroic poem can be writ on the Epicurean principle." Such a view deprives man of the dignity and importance which are essential to the high mimetic mode. Human action becomes meaningless, whereas for the epic poet it is part of a divine order. Even the Iliad provides this sense that order exists- there are the gods, and beyond them there is Fate-even though it may seem unjust and cruel by human standards. Don Juan, on the contrary, asserts a radical disorder in the universe, a disorder which it exemplifies by its own form. Milton attempted to continue and extend a tradition whose authority he accepted; Byron attempted to destroy it. To call Don Juan an "epic of negation," as Brian Wilkie has done in his recent study, Romantic Poets and the Epic Tradition,'2 is to beg the question. An epic of negation is an impossibility and

'1Ridenour, p. 92. "Wilkie, p. 188.

618

J O HN L A U B E R

the word "epic," here, can hardly mean more than something like "long narrative poem of a certain seriousness." It has lost all value as a critical term.

Plainly, too, the relation of Don Juan to the epic differs greatly from that of neoclassic mock-epic and low burlesque. Miock-epic does not really challenge the whole epic genre, as Don Juan does, by denying the epic concept of heroism; its satire is stylistic and comparatively superficial. On the other hand, Don Juan has a kind of seriousness, for all its flippancy and inconsistency, which is absent from the low burlesque. The poem obviously is influenced by both of these traditions, but is not included within either of them.

A poem which consistently violates, or directly attacks, the conventional structure, language, action, and moral value of epic poetry can hardly be considered an adaptation or redefi- nition of the epic. Don Juan is not an epic, but an anti-epic. Byron is intensely conscious of the epic tradition, as almost every page of the poem reminds us, but he sees it as an influ- ence to be destroyed, a wornout form whose conventions would prevent the modern poet from dealing with "human things and acts" (his proper subject) and whose moral values, with their glorification of war and false conception of heroism, are positively dangerous to society. In the modern world, and Byron's world is essentially modern, it is no more possible to compose epic poetry than Elizabethan tragedy. In this respect, at least, Byron saw his age more clearly than Wordsworth or Keats. It was important that the enormous prestige of the epic should be deflated and its uselessness as a model be re- vealed, and this Don Juan attempts to do. Don Juan, of course, cannot be entirely included in any formula, and it contains much that is irrelevant to the epic tradition. Nevertheless, the anti-epic intention is not only reflected in innumerable details, but functions as a shaping and unifying force throughout the poem.

UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA

619