"Don Juan": Not a Prolific Epic

Don Juan
“Don Juan” is a very interesting poem as a result of Lord Byron’s unconventional use of the epic form of poetry. In some of the previous blogs on Byron’s “Don Juan” there were discussions of this poem being an attempt to reform the epic poem and ridicule the epic poem.
The idea that Byron was attempting to reform the epic poem seems plausible when considering the epic poems that precede this poem. Many such epic poems and their creators are included in the focus of this poem. It seems that Byron severely lacks respect for the poets and their work that came before his epic poem. Byron ridicules Wordsworth and Coleridge, among others, saying that Wordsworth is “crazed beyond all hope.” This is striking to me because “The Prelude” by William Wordsworth seems to be a form of the epic that is much more difficult to write. Wordsworth’s language and ideas in “The Prelude” are so much more complex than Byron’s in “Don Juan”. Wordsworth uses abstract ideas and phrases in order to display a very complex and concrete maturation of his poetic mind and its connection with Nature. Neither Byron’s language nor his ideas are nearly as multifaceted in this poem as Wordsworth’s in “The Prelude”. This poem is an epic poem, but one that should not be held in the high esteem of the epics by Homer, Milton, and Wordsworth. “Don Juan” is simply a poem telling an embellished story with seemingly randomly placed tangential reflections. In stanzas 128 through 134 Byron digresses into his reflections about man and his achievements that seem to wander away from the reflections that would coincide with the situation of the story.
As for the idea that Byron wrote this poem with the intentional purpose of ridiculing the epic poem, this does not seem so plausible. Towards the end of Canto I Byron begins to discuss the purpose of his epic poem and the nature of everlasting fame. Starting in stanza 200 Byron basically begins tooting his own horn by stating the merits of his epic and the faults of others’. Byron even defends the morality of his poem to his reader. It seems that a great epic poem would not need to make these assertions. While Byron’s poem is entertaining and easy to read, it is not a prolific work of poetry as are the works of the poets from which he detracts.