n.
- A libertine; a profligate.
- A man who is an obsessive seducer of women.
[After Don Juan, legendary 14th-century Spanish nobleman and libertine.]
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American Heritage Dictionary:
Don Juan |
[After Don Juan, legendary 14th-century Spanish nobleman and libertine.]
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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
Don Juan |
For more information on Don Juan, visit Britannica.com.
Roget's Thesaurus:
Don Juan |
noun
Antonyms by Answers.com:
Don Juan |
Oxford Grove Music Encyclopedia:
Don Juan |
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 |
Gale Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology:
Don Juan |
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.
Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable:
Don Juan |
Random House Word Menu:
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Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Don Juan |
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2011) |
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 Prague in 1787 (with Giacomo Casanova probably 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 is a rogue and a libertine who takes great pleasure in seducing women (mainly virgins) and enjoys fighting their men. Later, in a graveyard, Don Juan encounters a statue of Don Gonzalo, the dead father of a girl he has seduced, Doña Ines de Ulloa, 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]
In Castilian Spanish, Don Juan is pronounced [doŋˈxwan]. The usual English pronunciation is /ˌdɒnˈwɑːn/, with two syllables and a silent "J". However, in Byron's epic poem it rhymes with ruin and true one, indicating that it was intended to have the trisyllabic spelling pronunciation /ˌdɒnˈdʒuːən/. This would have been characteristic of his English literary predecessors who often deliberately imposed partisan English pronunciations on Spanish names, such as Don Quixote /ˌdɒnˈkwɪksət/.
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This section may contain excessive, poor or irrelevant examples. You can improve the article by adding more descriptive text and removing less pertinent examples. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for further suggestions. (May 2010) |
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.
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![]() | American Heritage 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 |
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![]() | Roget's Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 byHoughton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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![]() | Gale Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Copyright © 2001 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
| Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. A Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. © 2006 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more | ||
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