Don Juan

By: George Gordon Byron

Narrated by: Charlton Griffin

Byron's Don Juan is a comic masterpiece written in a satirical, mock heroic style. Based on the legend of Don Juan, (which is here pronounced JOO-AN), Byron completely reverses the portrayal of Juan, instead showing him as someone easily seduced by women instead of seducing them. He called this form of poetry "epic satire". It is generally considered to be Byron's masterpiece.

Download the accompanying reference guide.Public Domain (P)2014 Audio Connoisseur

An Amazing Satirical Journey

It is unfortunate, and indeed a loss to literature, that Byron failed to complete this novel before his passing. It’s a beautiful work that is properly satirical — funny, engaging, and written in a noble diction.

I was wrong before. This version is terrific!

I've never objected to the fact that Charlton Griffin always impersonates a British accent; it's that his British persona ALWAYS tends to be so puffed up and high-falutin, and that some of his pronunciations don't seem to be correct for either side of the Atlantic. But in his recent second recording of The Canterbury Tales, he decisively overcame what I saw as his previous limitations, or at least overcame my resistance to them. So I decided to listen to his Don Juan yet again.

I had heard the whole thing when it first came out, and have attempted it two or three times more--Byron's irresistibly witty narrative is very hard for me to stay away from, and no one of the existing recordings is enough to sate my appetite for long. And even on this most recent listen, it took me a few dozen stanzas to really warm up to Griffin's approach. But now I can't believe how much joy I've been missing by not making this my default version of Byron's exuberant and hilarious masterpiece. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Griffin!

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Wonderful read/listen. I appreciated that I was able to take Don Juan's journey with Audible.