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Don Juan

 
Dictionary: Don Juan   (wŏn', hwŏn', jū'ən)
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Don Juan

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n.
  1. A libertine; a profligate.
  2. A man who is an obsessive seducer of women.

[After Don Juan, legendary 14th-century Spanish nobleman and libertine.]


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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Don Juan
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Fictional character famous as a heartless womanizer but also noted for his charm and courage. In Spanish legend, Don Juan was a licentious rogue who seduced a young girl of noble family and killed her father. Coming across a stone effigy of the father in a cemetery, he invited it home to dine with him, and the ghost of the father arrived for dinner as the harbinger of Don Juan's death. The legend of Don Juan was first written down by Tirso de Molina, who gave it an original twist in his tragedy The Seducer of Seville (1630). The story was subsequently taken up by many other artists including W.A. Mozart, in the opera Don Giovanni (1787); Molière and George Bernard Shaw, in plays; and Lord Byron in his long satiric poem Don Juan (1819 – 24).

For more information on Don Juan, visit Britannica.com.

Thesaurus: Don Juan
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noun

  1. A man who seduces women: debaucher, Lothario, seducer. See sex/asexual.
  2. A man amorously attentive to women: amorist, Casanova, gallant, lady's man, Lothario, Romeo. See sex/asexual.
  3. A man who philanders: Casanova, lady's man, philanderer, womanizer. Slang lady-killer, wolf. Idioms: man on the make, skirt chaser. See sex/asexual.

Antonyms: Don Juan
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n

Definition: womanizer
Antonyms: celibate

Music Encyclopedia: Don Juan
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Tone poem by Richard Strauss (1889).

The legend of Don Juan has been the subject of many operas, the best known being Mozart's Don Giovanni. Other composers who have used the story include Melani, Gazzaniga, Fabrizi, Federici, Dibdin, Pacini, Dargomïzhsky, Delibes, Alfano and Goossens; Gluck wrote a ballet on it (1761).


 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Don Juan
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Don Juan (dŏn wän, jū'ən, Span. dōn hwän), legendary profligate. He has a counterpart in the legends of many peoples, but the Spanish version of the great libertine has become the most universal. At the height of his licentious career, Don Juan seduces the daughter of the commander of Seville and kills her father in a duel. When he later visits a statue of his victim and jeeringly invites it to a feast, the statue comes to life and drags Juan off to hell. The earliest-known dramatization of the story is El burlador de Sevilla (1630), attributed to Gabriel Téllez, who wrote under the pseudonym Tirso de Molina. Molière's Le Festin de Pierre (1665) and Mozart's opera Don Giovanni (1787) are perhaps the most famous treatments of the theme. Among the many other literary works that use the unscrupulous gallant as the hero are Byron's Don Juan, Espronceda's El estudiante de Salamanca, and Shaw's Man and Superman.

Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia: Don Juan
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The mysterious, probably fictional Yaqui Indian sorcerer whose metaphysical doctrines were recorded by Carlos Castaneda in his best-selling book The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968) and in numerous subsequent writings. No evidence has been produced for the actual existence of Don Juan outside the pages of Castaneda's books.

Sources:

Castaneda, Carlos. Journey to Ixtlan. N.p., 1972.

——. A Separate Reality. N.p., 1971.

——. The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. N.p., 1968.

Wikipedia: Don Juan
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For other uses, see Don Juan (disambiguation).
Don Juan in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, a painting by Max Slevogt

Don Juan (Spanish, or Don Giovanni in Italian) is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest) by Tirso de Molina is a play set in the fourteenth century that was published in Spain around 1630. Evidence suggests it is the first written version of the Don Juan legend. Among the best known works about this character today are Molière's play Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre (1665), Byron's epic poem Don Juan (1821), José de Espronceda's poem El estudiante de Salamanca (1840) and José Zorrilla's play Don Juan Tenorio (1844). The most influential version of all is Don Giovanni, an opera composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, first performed in 1787 (with Giacomo Casanova in the audience) and itself the source of inspiration for works by E. T. A. Hoffmann, Alexander Pushkin, Søren Kierkegaard, George Bernard Shaw and Albert Camus.

Don Juan is used synonymously for "womanizer", especially in Spanish slang, and the term Don Juanism is sometimes used as a synonym for satyriasis.

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Don Juan legend

Don Juan is a rogue and a libertine who takes great pleasure in seducing women and (in most versions) enjoys fighting their champions. Later, in a graveyard Don Juan encounters a statue of the dead father of a girl he has seduced, and, impiously, invites the father to dine with him; the statue gladly accepts. The father's ghost arrives for dinner at Don Juan's house and in turn invites Don Juan to dine with him in the graveyard. Don Juan accepts, and goes to the father's grave where the statue asks to shake Don Juan's hand. When he extends his arm, the statue grabs hold and drags him away, to Hell.[1]

Pronunciation

In Castilian Spanish, Don Juan is pronounced [doɴˈχwan]. The usual American-English pronunciation is /ˌdɒnˈwɑːn/, with two syllables and a silent "J". However, in Byron's epic poem it humorously rhymes with ruin and true one, suggesting that it was intended to have the trisyllabic spelling pronunciation /ˌdɒnˈdʒuːən/.

Chronology of works derived from the story of Don Juan

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There is also a book from Jozef Toman with name The life and death of don Miguel de Manara. Both the Flynn and Fairbanks versions turn Don Juan into a likeable rogue, rather than the heartless seducer that he is usually presented as being. The Flynn movie even has him successfully foiling a treasonous plot in the Spanish royal court. Shaw's play turns him into a philosophical character who enjoys contemplating the purpose of life. Beers' play turns him into a poetic, epic character recoiling from the debasing popular image of womanizer and cheap lover.

References

  1. ^ The Legend of Don Juan, Theatre Arts at the California Institute of Technology.
  2. ^ http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_de_Zamora
  3. ^ Apocryphal Tales, Karel Čapek.
  4. ^ The Lost Diary of Don Juan.

Further reading

External links


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Answers Corporation Antonyms. © 1999-2009 by Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Music Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Copyright © 2001 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Don Juan".  Read more